


What To Do With Magic Beans

by LadyLondonderry



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Fairy Tales, Jack and the beanstalk au, M/M, dusty is a cow, fuck i still dont know how to tag, harry climbs a beanstalk, liam is responsible, louis is a prince, niall is "from ireland" wherever that is, zayn is a nanny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-03-10 21:36:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3304328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLondonderry/pseuds/LadyLondonderry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry tends to mess up a little. Send him for berries and he comes home with a new pet, send him to sell his favourite cow and he comes home with a pocket of magic beans.</p><p>Who knew those things actually worked?</p><p>Or, a Jack and the Beanstalk AU featuring Harry as Jack, Louis as a prince, Zayn as a nanny, Liam as the reasonable one, and Niall as whatever the fuck he's doing.<br/>Also, a giant teacup.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So... A short chaptered fic? Blame it on Into the Woods I suppose.

Dusty the cow was no longer producing milk.

Harry had named Dusty himself, back when he was a small child and his mother had refused to let Harry keep the wolf pup that he had found in the woods as a pet.

"Mum, look what I've found!"

"What've you- Oh. No, Harry. I sent you to pick blackberries. That's much too furry to be blackberries."

But Mum, it's just a baby! Can I keep it?"

"No, Harry. That's not blackberries."

"But I wanted to give it a nice name! Like Dusty. It looks like a Dusty."

The pup woofed in agreeance.

"I'll let you name the blackberries."

"M'not naming the blackberries, Mum."

"Fine. We have a new calf this week, you can name her. But put the furry thing back and come home with blackberries."

And so the calf was named Dusty.

Dusty had been wonderful as a milk producing cow. She had been Harry's closest friend through every disaster growing up. From when he was nine and his father had died of the plague, when he was eleven and the whole kingdom went into mourning over the loss of the royal heir, to when he was thirteen and the chicken coop had burned down with all the chickens inside, Dusty had been through it all.

But now Dusty was no longer producing milk, and Harrys mum was insisting she be sold.

Harry was upset and tried to explain to his mother that Dusty could not be sold because she was his friend, but his mum explained that there wasn't enough food around to feed a cow that wouldn't milk. Harry tried to explain that his sister Gemma didn't really do anything either so they should sell her instead, but his mum disagreed, for some reason that Harry couldn't place.

So she sent Harry one sunny morning into town to sell Dusty. She instructed him to get enough for her to feed the family for two weeks. She repeated this instruction twice to him before he left the house, as if he could possibly forget the price of his best friend's execution.

\---

Harry takes the trail into town, with Dusty at his side, at a snail's pace. He actually does quite a bit at a snail's pace, because he lives in a little house in the country and once his chores are done for the day there's not much else to do. So he might as well imitate the garden snails. Enjoy life. Learn to move slower than molasses. All in good fun.

Not that he's seen molasses move in quite some time. The farm has, over recent years, gone into decline and he's fairly sure soon enough they'll be forced to move closer to town to scrounge for new work.

Today, though. Today is for enjoying. So he converses with Dusty as he walks. Shows her the sights.

"Over there, Dusty, are some nice blue wildflowers. Don't they look delicious?"

Dusty rolls her eyes at him. He picks a few and puts them in his hair.

"And look there, Dusty! There's some pink ones! Wouldn't they go great with the colour of your hooves?"

Dusty looks exasperated. Harry grabs a handful and starts weaving them into a chain for her. 

As they enter the town itself and start making their way toward the marketplace, Harry is sporting a rainbow of petals in his curls and Dusty is sporting a crown and upwards of seven anklets. Harry has always viewed Dusty as a fan of high fashion. After all, she munched all the flowers Harry referred to as red before he realised they were actually blood orange.

She really is a genius of a cow.

Maybe he should sell her to a dressmaker.

\---

In the market square, he begins showing Dusty off to the farmers he knows, hoping maybe they could see what a great companion she makes, maybe she could live out a comfortable life in someone else's field. After learning that she's a milker that doesn't milk, though, none of them are keen on the offer. He tentatively approaches a couple butchers (covering Dusty's ears every time), but they take a look at Dusty and tell Harry with the amount of meat on her bones, there's only so much they'll offer, and the prices they give are certainly not enough to feed Harry's family for two weeks.

He's considering giving up, really. Letting Dusty loose in a field and claiming she just ran off (this might be way his mum doesn't think he's too bright. Quite a few of his animals have been known to "run off" around the point that they may be considered somebody's dinner). He starts informing Dusty of this plan - pointing out nice pastures as they walk by - but she doesn’t seem completely keen on the idea. Too loyal for her own good, he supposes.

"Ohh my very good gracious goodness!"

He's interrupted in his description of the field behind the ironsmith's house by a group of girls swarming around Dusty. One of the two smallest ones (they must be twins, identical in matching muddy dresses and frocks) is the one who uttered the exclamation, and the others follow suit.

"What an adorable cow!"

"She's covered in flowers!"

"She's got bracelets!"

"Ohh my very good graciousness!"

Harry is very glad that Dusty has always declared herself a pacifist, because the gaggle of four girls is circling her like a swarm of possessive geese, pinching at her flower chains and petting her flanks almost reverently.

"What's her name?'

The tallest girl (they're all short, really) addresses him, and the others all turn their attention over to hear his answer.

"This is Dusty," he says, reaching up to scratch behind her ears affectionately.

The twins squeal at the name and begin going off about how "very goodness gracious that is such a cute name!" and taking turns reaching up and scratching behind her ears as well.

Dusty flicks her tail in a way Harry is sure means that while she could do without the squealing noises, she very much appreciates the affection.

The girls that Harry takes to be the middle child (they MUST be siblings, right?) gauges the twins' reactions for a minute before speaking.

"What're you doing with her in the marketplace, then?"

"I was looking to sell her, actually," Harry says sadly. "She won't milk any more, and we can't afford to feed her."

"Oh that _is_ sad! She seems like such a lovely animal!"

Harry nods. "She's an excellent listener, too."

"Really?" The oldest raises an eyebrow.

"Oh yes! Not a lot of people will listen to my stories without complaining about how long they take to tell. Not Dusty though, she's never minded."

"I can see what you mean..." the girl says and Harry thinks heeeeey he should probably be offended by that comment. But it is the truth, so he supposes he can let it slide.The two older girls watch the twins fawn over Dusty. "How much are you asking?"

"My mum says we need enough for the three of us to eat for two weeks." Harry says.

"Oh! We've got that! Don't we, Dais?" The twins seem to have tuned into their conversation, and the one is now digging in a purse around her waist. "Can we buy your cow, sir? Oh please say we can! Look, we've got these!"

She empties the contents of the purse into her and hand holds it up to him; she's holding what looks like three large yellow lima beans.

Harry's not sure three beans will feed three people for two weeks. He's bad at math, certainly, but not THAT bad.

"Yeah, I have them too, hold on, take mine too!" the other girl says and pulls another three beans from her own purse to add to her sister's collection.

Six might still be a bit short, really.

He looks at their hopeful faces in dismay because he really shouldn't, but at the same time no one has given him the offer that his mum has demanded, and at least these girls don't seem to want to eat Dusty for dinner, so.

He looks back to the two older girls and sees that they're trying desperately to hold in laughter. At his confused expression they completely give up and hold onto each other, shoulders shaking.

"Listen," the older one says she regains herself, "I know that looks utterly ridiculous. I swear they're not crazy. It was their birthday a couple days ago and their fairy godmothers gave them those, said when planted they would be used to make sure the bearer never goes hungry again and would bring them back something they lost."

They're pulling his leg, Harry is fairly sure. Nobody has fairy godparents any more unless they're royalty or their parents managed to trick a fairy into service. Very risky. Probably cursed beans, if that's the case.

But they want to give Dusty a good home, right?

"What'll you girls do with Dusty if I agree to sell her?" he asks, directing his question at the twins. He's met with enthusiastic replies instantly as they talk over each other to make their good intentions known.

"Brush her every day!"

"Feed her! Hay and grass and stuff!"

"Give her fresh water!"

"Introduce her to our sheep Delilah and Annabelle!"

"Give her more flowers!"

"Read her poetry!"

"Take her on walks!"

"Let her sleep in my room!"

"No! She'll sleep in my room!"

"She'll sleep in the barn with the horses." the middle girl interjects sternly. "Nobody is sharing their room with a cow."

Harry thinks that Dusty looks hurt. On her behalf she says, "Dusty doesn't like horses. They tend to be quite rude. Is there anywhere else you can keep her?"

The twins nod in unison. "In our-"

"NOT in your room!" the oldest says. "We've got a barn for our sheep and goats. Does that work?"

Harry nods. "She'll like that. Okay, I'll take your deal then."

The twins squeal again, even higher pitched this time. The one dumps the beans into his hands and they both offer an array of thanks. Harry thinks he'll probably dump the beans on his way home, with the assumption that they're cursed.

"Lotte! Fizz! Daisy! Phoeb! Christ, there you are!"

Someone stumbles up behind them and Harry turns to see who it is. He's greeted with the sight of a truly beautiful man, hands on his knees as he regains his breath from running up to them. He's wearing fancy robes and his dark hair is pulled back into a small ponytail. He's got darker skin, clearly not native to this country, and just a slight accent of somewhere else Harry's never heard before.

"Your parents are gonna be furious with me you know! What did you think you were doing, wandering off? You know that makes them worry!"

"Shush Zayn, you know they're much too overprotective of us," the oldest addresses him.

"Yes but after your brother-"

"Years ago! And at least when we run off we run off in a group. Nothing's gonna happen around here, I've never even heard of violence this side of the village. The most corruption that exists over here is people letting their animals run into other people's fields to graze."

The man - Zayn - rolls his eyes. "Yes your highness, but-"

"Lotte!"

"Sorry. Yes, Lotte, but it doesn't mean they don't worry. Plus you're wanted back for dinner which was my actual reason to go looking for you."

"Dinner!" shouts one of the twins. "I'm starved! Haven't eaten in weeks! Can we eat outside with Dusty? Can we Zayn?"

"Yeah Zayn!" the other joins in, "Can we?"

Zayn looks confused. "Who's Dusty?"

Harry, feeling left out, interjects, "She's the cow."

Zayn seems to view Harry for the first time. "And for that matter, who are you?"

"I'm the former owner of Dusty."

"You girls bought a cow?" he sounds truly exasperated and quite tired now. Harry wonders if they do this a lot. Maybe that's how they've ended up with the horses and goats and sheep.

"Yes! And her name's Dusty! Isn't she wonderful?"

The middle girl speaks up. "Okay, yes wonderful, but can we get going? I'm hungry too."

"Yes, of course, bring your cow I suppose girls. We'll put her with the horses-"

"The sheep!"

"Okay, with the sheep. Whatever."

Harry watches as they begin down the road, seeming to forget him as quickly as they found him. A second later though, one of the twins runs back and Harry finds himself enveloped in a (somewhat muddy) hug. She stands on her tiptoes and whispers, "You will plant the beans, right?"

He isn't going to, but then he remembers what Zayn had slipped - 'highness' - and thinks it's worth a shot, anything's worth a shot at this point. He nods down at her and she looks pleased before running back to join her sisters, Zayn and Dusty.

Harry starts the lonely trip home.

\---

"I'm home, Mum!"

Harry's mum meets him at the gate, wiping her hands on her apron and smelling of fresh bread. "Welcome back, Harry! I see you don't have Dusty with you, but you seem to be a little lacking in food stuffs." She gives him a wary look. "Care to explain?"

Harry knew this was coming. "Well, no one I found was quite willing to pay the price we wanted for Dusty, but I found the next best thing, see!" he digs his hand into his pocket and pulls out the six beans. "They're magic beans, Mum! If I plant these we're supposed to never go hungry again!"

Harry's mum sighs. "Oh Harry, that's not quite right." She eyes the handful of beans warily. "Well, if you must. But don't plant them in the garden, we need that soil for the cabbages."

"Yes Mum!" Harry gives her a hug and squeezes past to find some nice pots to plant them in. He knows his mum thinks he's a little dimwitted, and after pulling this stunt today he doesn't so much blame her. It's harder to believe in the power of supposedly magic beans when the girls who were so confident in them are now so far away. With his cow.

He grabs six of the more cracked mugs from the kitchen cabinets, the ones that nobody will miss, and puts them on the windowsill in his room filled with dirt from the backyard and a bean in each. After dinner when he goes to pump water to fill the bath, he gets some extra to fill the cups.

When he goes to sleep that night, the moon is shining through the window panes and the six mugs are basking in the light, their beans almost iridescent on the beds of dirt.

\---

_Tap tap tap._

_Tap tap._

_Tap tap tap tap crack tap CRACK._

Harry blearily opens his eyes. He's crawled as far under his blanket as he can manage, the window has always been shit at keeping out the cold. He peeks his head out from under it and it's still dark outside, clearly nowhere near sunrise. He wonders if there's another owl trying to get in his window. One did last month, and when he opened it with the hope of making a new friend it flew inside, looked at him disgruntledly, and flew out again. He wonders to this day what he did to offend it.

_Tap crack crack._

_Tap tap crack SMASH._

Harry jumps up with the adrenaline that kicks into his system with the sound of shattering glass that fills the room. Certainly not an owl, a burglar maybe? He twists away from his blanket and finds himself more caught in it than before and topples to the ground.

Facing the window now, he can see that he actually doesn't have much of a window any more so much as he has a large window-shaped hole in his wall. Also, very large plants. 

The six mugs that had been sitting on his sill hours earlier are nowhere to be found, but shards and pieces of them litter the ground with the glass from the window. Thick vines sit in their place, roots trailing haphazardly over the sill and down to the floor of his room as well as out the window. The six stalks each look to be around five inches thick, and leaning out the opening where the window was, upward into the air above Harry's house where he can't see them end. 

Never plant magic beans in the house, Harry reminds himself. If that's not some sort of saying by now, it certainly should be.

He squirms out of the blanket and slips on the shoes at the foot of his bed to avoid cutting his feet on the glass. He sticks his head out between the stalks and cranes upward to see how far up they go. He can see where the stalks end, and the sporadic little leaves that pepper their tops are now about twice as high up as the roof of his house. They sway in the warm night breeze, and seem almost in control of their movements; the stalks twist around each other to form a more solid foundation and as Harry watches he can see that they're still growing, angling upward toward the moon that is almost directly overhead. They're twining together to form one large knotted stalk, and he marvels that their weight doesn't topple them over at once.

Which, now that he thinks of it, means these roots will probably be taking deeper root very soon. He may not have much of a bedroom wall left by morning.

He thinks of his mum and sister, asleep in the room next to him, and how much trouble he will surely get in when they awake. How his mum will sigh and say 'Oh Harry...' and Gemma will laugh at how daft he was to plant the beans on his windowsill, or even to sell Dusty for magic beans at all. 

The thought makes his blood boil a little.

He's _not_ stupid, he's _really_ not, but when life is made up of little mistakes and inconveniences, and they all center around one family, one person tends to take the blame. Harry's been fine with this for most of his life, he really hasn't minded being thought the fool, but it would be _nice_ for _just a moment_ to be recognised as more.

So he takes a headscarf from the cracked and worn old wardrobe, ties his curls so they won't fall loose in the breeze, and steps up to the sill to climb this beanstalk.

\---

The vines of the intertwining stalks are strong under his weight, holding Harry up effortlessly. Smaller branches that end in full green leaves give him footholds and places to grab as he climbs at a steady pace. His shoes have some holes in them that feel the wind the farther up he climbs, and his hands quickly become raw from gripping the smaller branches. Still he climbs, though, because he feels it's already much too late to back down, and at least since he's climbing the stalk as it grows, it seems to be pushing him upward a little in its search for the stars, making his journey just a little faster.

Really, climbing a terribly tall plant which just seems to be reaching effortlessly into the clouds above doesn't seem like the brightest idea, and Harry entertains for a moment the thought that his mum is right, that he is a fool, but he thinks of magic and fairy godmothers and that there's not really much in the way of fortune waiting for him back on the ground anyway, so he might as well make the best effort.

He climbs until he can only see the roof of his cottage, climbs until the whole of the farm is the size of his hand, climbs until he is too terrified to look down because the world below is so far that it's begun to get fuzzy in his sight, the clouds spreading out below him where they once hung above him. He thinks of the little girls who gave him the beans and he thinks of Dusty, hopes that she's doing well with the sheep and the goats, and that that guy Zayn didn't try to give her a home with the horses.

His arms grow tired and his hands feel like they'll open up and start bleeding soon, his eyes begin to droop with sheer exhaustion because he's doing this on very little sleep anyway, and he did spend all of yesterday on the road to the market and back; he wonders if he could sleep in the branches, wonders what the possibility of falling out and down, down, down, wonders-

His head hits something very solid, much more solid than the swaying vines.

He looks up and confusion sets in at what he's looking at. It's almost like wood flooring; planks connected to one another forming an even surface above him. But it's ABOVE him that's the problem, not being where a floor normally is. He stretches a hand up and feels along the wood, finding only smooth finish and a few small knots. It's completely solid, doesn't budge or sway under his fingertips. He worries that he's hit some sort of ceiling, that there's nowhere for him to go now, but the vines still haven't stopped growing, and they're now splaying along the food above him, pushing upward with all their little viney strength. Harry watches in wonder, settling into a sort of a cocoon between the six vines. After a few minutes of strain, one vine begins to crack the smooth surface, and then more cracks appear, mostly snaking out from where the small knots on the planks are located. Harry only has to wait a moment longer before they've broken out about a meter worth of a hole above him, the stray bits of wood drifting down to the world below, and he can continue upward to the other side.

\---

Above the wood surface, it's dark.

Harry takes a moment to let his eyes adjust, because a moment ago there were stars and a moon to light the sky, before the odd wooden ceiling had appeared. Now, he sits down and catches his breath, letting his legs dangle through the hole that he climbed through, absentmindedly holding the tops of the stalks which poke up through the hole and now seem to have stopped growing, perfectly content where they are.

He can see now that the floor he is sitting on looks exactly like the wooden ceiling outside, although maybe a bit dustier. It's probably hard to collect dust on a ceiling in the sky, as dust tends to drift downward instead of up. He gazes upward and is met with the sight of crown molding, although it looks ages above him, and as he slowly begins to be able to focus on what is around him in the darkness, he starts to take in shapes that are very familiar to him. A couch, chairs, a side table, a bureau. 

Yet, they're not THAT familiar to him really, because they're all absolutely ridiculously HUGE. 

He stands and stretches, popping his spine, and makes his way over to the nearest piece of furniture; a large pomegranate coloured couch. He finds that he can walk below the actual couch itself without having to bend, the top of his curls barely brushing the underside and snagging painfully in a few springs. It's also a disgustingly dusty space to be in, so he backs out after a moment of looking around. 

He wanders the room almost aimlessly, comparing his height to everything he walks by. He can jump almost high enough to grab a couch cushion, so maybe he could hoist himself onto it, but he's nowhere near tall enough to climb up any of the chair legs in the room. The bureau that he found was low enough to the ground that he could grab the handle of the lowest drawer, but all the strength he has can't compel it to budge open, so he moves on.

When he finally makes his way to a wall, he spies a door not too far down from him and makes his way toward it. Like everything else in the room, the door towers above him and the handle would take maybe ten of him stacked on top of one another to reach, but he can see a bit of light poking from underneath and he thinks that if he squeezes he should be able to get through to the other side by going through the crack between the door and the ground.

He loses his dignity and his shoe for a moment, but does manage to make it to the other side.

This room is lighter than the last one, a giant window on the opposite wall letting in light from the moon above. The sky seems to be a little light, like the sun is going to rise soon, and Harry wonders just how long it took him to climb all the way up here. 

It's a kitchen, he realises as he takes a cursory glance around. Much nicer than the kitchen he has a home, but a kitchen nonetheless. There's a dining table to his left that could fit over an entire wing of the marketplace, with two chairs pushed in, and along the wall across from him are a sink, stove, and a number of other appliances and fixtures that he doesn't recognise but is sure they have something to do with food preparation. To his right-

To his right is a house.

Okay, Harry has adjusted himself to believing that yes, he seems to be in a home belonging to a giant. Or giants. But now he finds himself looking at a house that's just sitting in the kitchen of another house. It's his size, and looks like someone has literally cut the front wall off, almost as if...

Is it a doll house?

It's beautiful and ornate, with real shingles covering the roof and glass windows that let a bit of moonlight through from where it shines in through the giant kitchen window.

Just like the doll house that his sister Gemma had when she was little, the entire wall facing Harry is simply... missing. He can see straight into both rooms on the bottom floor - a kitchen on the left and some sort of sitting room on the right - and the ceilings and tops of the walls of two rooms on the second floor as well.

He approaches the house hesitantly. There's wallpaper in the sitting room like he's only seen through the windows of the nicest houses in town. Is it simply a doll house? Is it just coincidence that everything seems exactly his size? He steps carefully over the threshold and onto the wood floor of the sitting room. The floor creaks a little under his feet, which certainly adds to the realism of his situation. There's a patterned area rug stretching over the center of the room that he makes his way over to, his toes poking through the holes of his boots to feel how very soft the carpet is under his feet. Around him are couches and chairs which look a little too intricate, he thinks, to be doll house furniture. There's a side table next to one of the couches, and up against one of the walls is a bookcase sparsely filled with books.

There's a doorway near the back of the room that Harry knows must lead into the kitchen he's seen from outside, but suddenly he's simply _so_ tired. The couches look incredibly comfortable and everything in him is calling out to stretch out on them and continue the sleep he left so long ago.

But Harry's not stupid. He's pretty sure he should thoroughly check the kitchen and the upstairs to make sure no one else is here first. Or is that ridiculous? This is a doll house. People don't live in doll houses, dolls do.

Yeah, dolls.

Dolls with very comfortable couches and blankets draped across the backs of the chairs that feel thick and heavy like real down quilts that he hasn't felt in years as the feathers slowly left his own over time.

 _These are some lucky dolls,_ he thinks as he pulls the blanket over his curled up form on the couch. _A life fit for a prince, they probably lead._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only a day late and technically only because my beta and I had conflicting schedules!

Harry wakes up to big blue eyes mere inches away from his own.

"What-" he starts to say but a hand is slapped over his mouth.

"Hey," Blue-Eyes whispers. He's got a huge smile and his face is still uncomfortably close to Harry's. Harry tries to back up a little but only manages to push his head back against the couch, and the only change to his field of vision is that now he can see a bright blond quiff to go with the blue eyes.

"Heeeeey," Blue-Eyes says again in a pseudo-whisper. His smile seems impossible wide. "I don't know you!" He's got some sort of accent that Harry's never heard before.

Harry's not sure what response he's supposed to give, so he shakes his head. This guy doesn't _seem_ like a threat.

"Where'd you come from?" he whisper-shouts, and proceeds to stare at Harry with rapt attention. Harry waits for him to realise the issue with his logic. It seems to click after another couple of moments. "Oh, sorry mate!" he says when it dawns on him. He removes his hand and leans back. "But shh, okay? Don't want to wake people."

Harry sits back, rubbing his jaw. "Who're you?" he asks, ignoring the other boy's initial question.

"M' Niall," the other boy says without hesitation. He plots down on the couch next to Harry. "Your turn!"

"Harry," he supplies. "Do you live here?"

"Yeah," Niall says. "You're not answering my question, though."

"Well I dunno. The ground, I suppose."

"Like, below the floor?"

Harry nods.

"Through the sky?"

He nods again.

"Do you have a fairy godmother or father by any chance?"

"No..."

This is clearly not the answer Niall was expecting and his face falls for the first time since Harry has opened his eyes. "I met someone else who does, though," Harry clarifies.

Niall frowns. "That's not how this normally works."

"Sorry, I guess?" Harry says, "I traded my cow to some girls for their magic beans. I was just hoping it would grow, like, giant pumpkins or something."

Niall sits back, apparently in thought. "You know... I don't think you're supposed to give away presents from fairy godparents."

Harry feels a little guilty, Niall does have a point. "Do you think... Do you think I should leave, then?"

The blond turns to him in confusion. "Course not, mate! You're not the odd one who decided to give the beans away. Besides, I don't think you can now?"

"What?"

"I _said_ , you're not the odd one-"

"No, not that part. I can't leave?" Harry asks nervously.

"Ah, that. No, I suppose not. You've been here all night, haven't you?"

Harry nods mutely.

"Probably not, then. This house moves, you see. If you climbed up a beanstalk, it's likely not where you left it."

Niall clearly looks uncomfortable relaying this information. Harry thinks he's going to be sick. " _What?_ " he very nearly shouts and Niall's hand is pressed over his mouth again.

"Sssh," his voice has returned to a whisper. "People sleeping. Walls are thin here!" he gestures to the lack of a fourth wall and then laughs at his own joke, taking his hand off Harry's face to cover his own.

"Niall!" Harry tries quieter but he's verging on hysterical. "I need to be able to leave! I've got a mum and a sister at home that I need to get back to!"

Niall sobers instantly. "M' sorry, mate, I really am. We've all got places and people to get back to. Look, after breakfast we'll go see where you came out of. Maybe it hasn't moved too far yet.

"After breakfast? Why after breakfast? Why not now?"

"You don't want to be caught out there by her, trust me."

Harry's about to question the vagueness that consumes that statement, but he's distracted by the sound of a door opening. It's not one of the doll house doors, but rather when he looks out into the large kitchen he can see a giantess walking in.

A giantess. Christ.

She's in a dress and heels, the latter of which he could probably fit himself inside of. Looking up up up Harry can see a curtain of blond hair and a pale face. She looks... pleasant enough, for a giantess, he supposes.

Her heels click as she walks over and squats in front of the doll house, her knees now uncomfortably close to where Harry and Niall are. She pays them no mind, however, instead focusing on the floor above them.

"Hello little mouse," she coos, and Harry feels sorry for her because clearly having giant vocal chords does nothing good for one's voice. "Ready to sing me a song for your breakfast? That one yesterday was very nice. Maybe we could hear that one again." She stands back up and, confusingly, is now holding a teacup in her hands.

She keeps teacups in her doll house? Is there a mouse upstairs?

He turns to Niall for some sort of explanation but Niall makes a face that Harry _hopes_ means he'll explain later.

The giantess sets the teacup down on the table and busies herself going through the cupboards and setting a kettle to boil. She sets the table with a jar of jam, a fresh piece of toast and, along with the teacup already there, a steaming mug of tea that Harry can smell ever so faintly from his position. Harry's stomach rumbles and Niall chuckles next to him. "Don't worry," he says quietly. "We get breakfast next."

"Well go on, then," the giantess says when she's sat at the table. "Let's hear something to greet the day with, yeah?"

Harry's about to decide that she is certifiably insane - she is still talking to a teacup, as far as he can discern - but a moment later the thought is wiped from his mind. Something - or someONE, surely - is indeed in that teacup and they have begun to _sing_. To Harry, the voice sounds almost ethereal. It's strong and bright like sunshine, but also scratchy and golden like fresh straw. Whomever it is has a voice octaves above Harry's own, and he finds he wants nothing more than to hear it keep going positively forever. The songs that are being sung aren't at all familiar to him, must be from another village or town he's never traveled to. Even so, he can't get enough of them, doesn't want them to end.

The voice sings and the giantess eats in silence. She eats halfway through the piece of toast during the first song, sips her tea during the second, and clears the table during the third. Finally, with only the piece of toast and jar of jam left on the table, she clears her throat.

"Thank you, hun, that was lovely." She dunks the leftover toast in the jar of jam and it comes up smothered and sticky, in sharp contrast to the well spread half she has eaten earlier. "Here, breakfast for you and your friends," and she drops it into the teacup.

Pushing in the chair behind herself as she rises, she takes the teacup in her oversized hands once again and brings it back to its former spot in the doll house before standing, straightening her dress, and leaving the room with a click of the door behind her as it closes.

There's silence now, and Harry looks to Niall for instruction, or perhaps explanation. Niall grins back at him in return. "Ready for some breakfast then?" he asks.

Harry feels as though he hasn't eaten in years, and nods hastily, following Niall's lead as he stands and makes his way toward the stairs.

"Hey guys!" Niall calls as he starts up the stairs. "I've brought a friend for breakfast!"

There's a groan from the floor above and a voice yells back, "I swear to God, Niall, if you've caught another mouse I'm not letting you up here until it's dead and you've taken a long shower. That last one was huge and gross."

Niall cackles and disappears up the stairs as Harry tentatively follows. "Both bigger _and_ more intelligent than a mouse this time!"

Harry reaches the top of the stairs and his faces with what looks like a large bedroom. There's a plush patterned carpet underneath his feet here, and in opposite corners of the room are two large canopy beds. He's not really focusing on those, though, and instead his attention is one the two people in the center of the room.

To the right is a guy with cropped hair and scruff. He's got a sort of puppy dog look to him, thick eyebrows knitted together in confusion as he surveys Harry right back.

To the left, though, is what really fascinates Harry; it's the _teacup_. Up close, it probably reaches about up to Harry's shoulders. There's a design of purple and blue flowers blossoming across its porcelain surface, but that's not really the important part. The important part is the boy inside the cup. He's gorgeous, Harry thinks, with fluffy brown hair sticking up every which way as if he's just woken up, striking blue eyes and sharp cheekbones.

He's also looking at Harry in a less than friendly way.

"Lads!" Niall says, apparently unaware of what can only be called a glare that teacup boy is sending Harry. "This is Harry! Met him downstairs this morning, asleep on our couch." He throws his arm around Harry, who stumbles into him with surprise. "Harry, this is Liam and the one in the teacup is Louis! Say hi!"

Harry gives a short awkward wave and a mumbled greeting. The other two - Liam and Louis - are still unabashedly staring at him and he's growing more than a little uncomfortable with it.

Liam seems to recover first. He reaches out a hand, which Harry shakes gratefully. "Welcome, Harry," he says with a kind smile. "Been climbing any beanstalks lately?"

Harry laughs, a little nervously, "I didn't realise it was such a common hobby," he says.

Liam chuckles politely in return. "Maybe fairy godparents these days are just running out of ideas."

Harry smiles and Niall laughs, but Harry notices that Louis' face is still just as stoic when he finally speaks.

"Yes, welcome to our house, New Mouth to Feed," he says with a roll of his eyes and what Harry thinks is almost a sneer. "So glad to add a fresh face to the list of people stuck here with me."

Harry feels as though he's been punched in the stomach. Of course he shouldn't have come here, shouldn't have taken someone else's magic beans, he's so _stupid_ all the time, why did he think this would be a good idea?

Over the sound of his own thoughts screaming in his ears, he hears Liam say reproachfully, "You know that's not fair, Lou, of course he didn't know what he was getting into."

Louis seems to glance everywhere but Harry. "Whatever," he grumbles, "Look, take your breakfast. I'm going to get this disgusting jam off of my hands."

His hands appear over the side of the teacup and harry recognises that he's holding the piece of toast that the giantess had dropped in the teacup earlier. It hadn't looked that big at the time but up close Harry finds it to be absolutely huge, larger than a loaf fresh out of the oven back home. It's also regrettable that she had simply dunked the piece in jam because it seems to be dripping everywhere. Liam takes it from him, and Louis, with a bit of difficulty, slips his way over the edge of the teacup and onto the floor. The movement is accented, confusingly enough, with a clink of metal. His hands really are covered in red sticky jam and two disconcerting red handprints are now visible on the rim of the cup. He stalks over to the only door leading out of the room and closes it rather violently behind him.

There's silence in the room for a moment, which is fast broken by, "Li, hand that over, I'm starving."

Liam startles back to himself and breaks off staring at the closed door. "Yeah, sure Niall." He tears off a piece and hands it to Niall, who immediately pops it into his mouth. "Um, you want some too, Harry?"

He tears off another piece and offers it to Harry, but Harry shakes his head, still feeling guilt trickling through him from clearly interrupting these people's lives.

Niall pluches the piece out of Liam's hand though and shoves it into Harry's mouth, nearly gagging him on it. "Don't be dense, Harry, I remember the noise your stomach was making a minute ago. Just ignore Louis, he's not good with visitors.”

Harry spits the piece into his hands (it's rather large), but does meekly take a bite afterward. It's actually really good - soft and warm like the loaves from the bakery. He always did want to work there.

Liam's brow is knitted together as he goes back to staring forlornly at the door. "Yeah he's... not normally rude like that. Really a nice guy normally."

"Bit of an ass sometimes."

" _Niall-_ "

"Well he is."

Liam shakes his head, apparently deciding to resolutely ignore this topic.

Harry's already finished the piece of toast offered to him. "That bread's fucking delicious," he speaks up. If he's going to be taking other people's livelihood, might as well compliment them on it.

Liam laughs and breaks off more pieces, handing them to Harry and Niall. "Yeah, the food's not too bad here. The jam's only ever strawberry, though. I miss marmalade more than anything."

"With the way sizes are around here," Niall says with his mouth full, "I wouldn't trust marmalade. Probably choke on the orange bits."

Liam nods sagely. "Like when we get strawberries, we have to be sure to pick the seeds off first."

"What about biscuits?" Harry asks in awe.

"Oh mate, you can't even imagine. She's got these, like, chocolate-covered ones with orange jam inside. They're huge!" he indicates their supposed size with his hands and Harry thinks he might be exaggerating just a little but he doesn't question it. "One time I ate a whole one meself - was sick for days! Completely worth it."

"That could be Niall's tag-line," Liam says, " _Was sick for days, completely worth it._ "

Niall shrugs. "Can't disagree."

"Speaking of," Liam says, "We should put this away so it doesn't get all disgusting before lunch."

"It's lunch too?" Harry asks.

"Yeah," Liam says, going down the stairs and motioning for them to follow. "Taylor doesn't get back until six or so, so we don't get anything new to eat until she's back."

"Locks the cabinets, tried 'em me’self," Niall says, clearly proud of thinking to check.

"So Taylor's the giantess then?" Harry asks.

Liam nods. "Yeah, she is. We should probably explain some of that, right? You're probably completely lost."

"Just a little, yeah," Harry says. They've gone from the sitting room that Harry stayed in overnight through the door to the kitchen on the other side. It looks a lot... cleaner, shinier than anything he's seen in a kitchen before. The counters have a number of appliances that belong in nicer houses than he's ever lived. Since he's always wanted to be a baker, he can sort of recognise some of the instruments, like the egg separator and the potato masher. It's a dream kitchen.

Liam opens a white cabinet as tall as he is, and when he does there's a blast of cold air which makes Harry gasp.

"What's that?" he demands. There's no ice in what he assumes to be an icebox. Magic?

"Oh mate, this is so fucking neat!" Niall says, "Liam's looked it up and says it's a frigator-"

"Refrigerator" Liam cuts in.

"Right that, and it's like an ice box but it runs on lightning!"

Harry gives a skeptical look to Liam, who seems like the more reasonable one. 

"He's more or less right," Liam says as he puts the piece of toast in the refrigerator. "It's not as crazy as he makes it sound, though. It's like the water wheels at farms, you know? Those generate energy and then..." he glances at Harry, "I don't think you're going to be as interested in this as I am."

"No, maybe not," Harry says.

"I never am either," Niall laughs. "Liam keeps hoping that someone will get stuck up here with the penchant for learning that he has, but so far no deal. Speaking of which," he puts his arm around Harry's shoulders, "You wanted to go look at that spot you got here from yesterday, right? I assume there's a hole in the ground somewhere around here?"

Harry nods. "Yeah, um... Through that other room?"

"Sure, mate. Liam, we're off ta explore the great unknown! Go figure out what wrong side of the bed Louis woke up on today, would ya?"

"I'm not his keeper, Niall."

"Y' kind of are, though."

Liam pulls a pout that Niall merely laughs at . "C'mon mate, the sooner we leave, the sooner we can be back for lunch."

\---

"Over there," Harry says. In the light of day the room seems even bigger. They pass the monstrous couches as Harry scans for the hole in the floor that was his entrance into the house the night before.

Niall and he spread out a bit over the area to find it, and after a couple minutes scanning the floor Harry hears him yell out, "Oh fucking shit!"

"What? What happened?"

"I almost fell through this bleeding hole in the floor, that's what happened!"

Harry jogs over. "Isn't that a good thing?"

"Not when falling through would mean falling for a few hours before I hit the ground!"

Harry looks where he gestures and sure enough, there is the large cracked bit of floor with a view of, confusingly, the sky below them. White fluffy clouds drift lazily past, and the ground, if it's down there somewhere, is so far below them it's barely visible.

There's no beanstalk in sight.

"M' sorry, mate," Niall says, patting him on the shoulder.

"So what does this mean then?"

"What does what mean?"

"Am I really just stuck here? Are you guys?"

"'Fraid so. It's sort of shit, yeah, but we've got a pretty good life here. You'll like it."

"Louis doesn't seem to like it," Harry says, probably scowling more than he should.

Niall shrugs. "He's alrigh' once you get to know 'im. Give 'im a chance, yeah?"

"I suppose," Harry says. Then, "Hey Niall, hold my feet."

"Hold your _what_ ," Niall says as Harry gets down onto his tummy and wriggles over to the hole in the ground. He feels when Niall grabs his ankles.

"'M just gonna have a look," he says, with the upper half of his body looming over the hole. Slowly, he lowers himself down so that he can get a look out at the sky around him.

"Mate, this is _not_ safe," comes Niall's voice from the other side of the floorboards.

Harry, on the other hand, is rather mesmerised by the surrounding sky, all baby blue and cottony clouds. It's bright and warm like the happy spring day it must be somewhere far below him.

Keeping a good grip on the wooden planks he's anchoring himself on, one hand comes into contact with something just a little rubbery in texture. He looks for the source of the feeling and finds, snagged on a crack, just a tiny swirl of green. "Niall!" he calls.

"Still right here!" Niall calls back from the other side of the floor.

"I found something! Hold on!"

As he wiggles and pulls himself back through the hole, he reaches out one hand and gets a firm grasp on the small piece of stalk stuck to the underside of the wood and pulls it with him. With a grunt of exertion, he's back on the right side of the floor again with Niall peering down at him.

"Y'alright, mate?" Niall asks, holding out a hand to help Harry up.

"Bad back," Harry winces, taking his hand. "But look what I found!"

They both study the piece of greenery in his hand. It's only about a meter long, thin and twisty, with a single leaf about the size of Harry's palm sprouting out from it.

"That's the craic," Niall says with awe. "Do you think it would grow?"

Harry shrugs. "Worth a shot I guess, innit?"

"Yeah mate, better than anything we've found in years!" Excitement clear in Niall's voice now, he continues. "Help me cover this hole, yeah? Otherwise she might fill it in and we'll be stuck anyway."

He motions to the area rug which Harry looks at doubtfully. It seems the size of a football field but there doesn't seem to be another option. Between the two of them, centimeter by centimeter, the manage to drag it until the tassels just barely cover the hole. Harry has the plant wrapped around his forearm for safekeeping and is sweating profusely. Niall, on the other hand, seems to only get more energised until he's practically bouncing off the walls as they walk back. 

"Liam! Louis!" he calls as they approach the doll house. "I told you I found someone better than a mouse! Come see what Harry found!"

\---

They find Liam and Louis upstairs in the bedroom. Liam has a number of towels and seems to be going through them one by one to clean the jam out of the teacup. Louis is laying curled up on one of the beds, apparently fast asleep. Harry is struck by just how _small_ he looks, and how peaceful his face looks in sleep, no longer outright glaring at Harry.

"Lou!" Niall shouts. "Lou, wake up and look at this!"

Louis' peaceful face contorts into a scowl. He doesn't open his eyes, just throws a pillow over his face and growls.

It's kind of cute, like a small grumpy animal.

Against his will, Harry feels a little smitten.

"Shush, Niall," Liam says, disapproving. "Let him sleep."

"No but this is _important_ ," Niall argues. "Here, look what Harry's found!"

He grabs Harry by the arm and sort of hauls him over to stand in front of Liam. Obligingly, Harry holds out the arm on which the plant is wrapped. "Pretty sure it's still alive," he says, "it's been sort of pinwheeling the way vines do, you know?"

Liam looks at it in fascination. He reaches over and softly pets along the edge of the single leaf. "That's... Wow, how did you get this?"

"He was an absolute nutter," Niall says immediately. "Told me to grab his ankles and then jus' dropped his top half through the hole in the floor and grabbed it."

"There wasn't a beanstalk," Harry clarifies. "That bit just got stuck when the rest was torn away, I suppose."

Harry looks past Liam to see Louis now sitting up on the edge of the bed. He's squinting with sleep still but he's leaning forward with interest. "Well let's see it then," he says when Harry meets his eye.

Harry feels proud that he has apparently graduated from outright dislike to mere indifference.

He approaches the bed and holds out his arm for Louis to see. As he does so, he takes in Louis' features up close for the first time; his tiny hands that stroke the lead just as Liam did, his soft sleeping shirt and trousers with buttons all down the outer leg, the fact that even sitting on the edge of the bed his feet still don't quite reach the floor where Harry's certainly would. What catches his attention eventually, and sends a tumble of questions into his brain, is a silver circlet around his ankle, clearly too tight to be removed, attached to a matching silver chain which trails along the floor.

Harry's mouth moves before his brain can tell it not to. "What's that?"

Louis follows Harry's line of eyesight and then scowls. "That," he spits, "is the reason why even if this little baby of a beanstalk manages to make its way back to the ground, it's not going to be a way out for everybody."

He pushes Harry's arm back and Harry feels awful again, clearly infringing on a world he knows nothing about.

"Lou, you know that's not true," Liam says as he and Niall approach. "We're not leaving you behind. It's you and I or nothing when we get the chance."

It sounds like an argument they've had before.

"You haven't been able to break the chain?" Harry asks. It looks pretty flimsy to him.

Louis scoffs and looks like he's about to make a comment that'll cut right through, but Liam jumps in. "It's enchanted, we're pretty sure," he says. "It was originally one of Taylor's necklaces, and we think she's got some sort of anti-stealing charm on it. Nothing we do can even bend the links, and you can see the clasp on the other end - she can open it whenever she wants but it's completely stuck whenever any of us try it."

Harry's eyes follow the chain along the ground to see where the other end connects, and finds that it's clasped firmly to the handle of the teacup. "Oh," is all he can think to say.

"Not that we haven't been trying!" Niall says. "Li and I have gone through almost every book she has in the library on magic. Problem is, magic doesn't seem to work quite the same for us as it does for giants."

"But why..." Harry's head is swimming with questions, most of which he assumes would be rude to ask.

"Why just me?" Louis supplies. "Why the teacup? Why the singing?"

Harry nods dumbly.

Louis sighs. "Look, shouldn't you be putting that weed in water or something? How about you do that and then we can have some sort of official introduction or something, yeah?" he doesn't seem upset or bitter any more, just tired.

"Oh yeah, I bet we have a bowl or something in the kitchen we could put it in, let's go see," Liam says, and motions for Harry to follow.

There's no soil anywhere in the house, of course, but they do find a small mixing bowl that Harry fills with a bit of water and places on the window sill behind the sink in the kitchen. He's not sure which end of the vine to put in the water. Niall suggests adding some bread as nutrients in lieu of soil. Liam says this is absolutely ridiculous and arranges the vine for them in the blow so that it sticks out and twines around the window frame.

Nothing can dampen Niall's spirit and Liam has to physically stop him from sneaking some old toast into the bowl. He lets Niall put a bit of jam in the water though, says the sugar might do well for it.

Harry's starting to realise how ridiculous this seems, but the beanstalk did start out as a magic one so he doesn't give up hope yet.

They settle in the sitting room, Harry and Liam on the couches, Niall lounging on the floor, and Louis in the chair nearest the stairs. Harry wonders if that's because the chain around his ankle isn't long enough to allow him farther into the room, but he doesn't ask. Liam brought the toast out because Louis didn't ended up eating any earlier, and of course Niall grabs some too (that boy's stomach seems bottomless).

"S-so, can I ask, um, how you guys ended up here?" he sort of feels like it's prying, but at the same time they've all apparently climbed a beanstalk at one point or another. Comradery by climbable plants or something.

"Sure mate," Niall says easily, "See, I climbed a beanstalk."

Harry pouts. _Well, duh._ Niall laughs at him.

"Okay, fine. I got the beans from my fairy godfather as a present for my, what, fifteenth birthday? Anyway he told me it would lead to friends in high places. Didn't think it would be that literal though!" Niall cackles at his own joke as Liam and Louis groan. 

"Don't ever laugh at that," Louis cuts in. "It'll just encourage him. He's been telling that same joke since he got here three years ago."

"Three years?" Harry asks, the reality of _stuck_ weighing a little heavier.

Niall nods. "Yeah, but it really isn't so bad. Back home I had things to do all day, responsibilities and shit I didn't really care about. At least here when I do things it's because I want to do them."

"Where's home, then?" Harry asks.

"Right near Dublin," Niall says, and then at Harry's blank look, "Y'know, Ireland?"

Harry shrugs. "Haven't heard of it. Don't tend to know much about geography." After his father died, his short education had come to a swift end as he had to start taking over on the farm.

Louis snickers. "Wait, you don't know what Ireland is? What kind of hole in the ground do you live in?"

Harry feels his cheeks colour and looks down at his feet. There's an awkward beat of silence that Liam thankfully ends.

"Louis and I got here about three years before Niall, I think. I followed him up the beanstalk, which I really don't think was how his godfather meant it to work out but-"

"BUT I would have gone batshit insane if you hadn't," Louis cuts in. "Don't know what I would have done for the last six years without you."

"Wait, you guys have been here six years?" Harry asks.

"You're starting to sound like a broken record," Louis mumbles, "but yeah, more or less."

"What've you done? Like, have you left this house? Explored?"

"We've done everything under the sun," Liam says. "When we first got here, there wasn't a dollhouse. We lived in a drawer of flannel in the bathroom until she finally found us, which was a good five or six months."

"Good thing she doesn't ever wash her flannel," Louis cuts in.

"It was a little disgusting, really," Liam says. "She really needs someone to talk to her about personal hygiene. But anyway she found us and Louis managed to convince her that we're some sort of magical fairies or something, and she offered us this house and food in exchange for music." he shrugs, "I've never had much of a voice on me but Louis got vocal lessons when he was little."

"Liam's being modest, his voice is just as good as mine." Louis says. "But Taylor only wanted one of us and she decided she liked my voice better. She did this," he holds up his leg, "so that she doesn't accidentally lose me or something. A couple years back we went exploring and almost dropped down the sink - which apparently has _blades_ in it, and she wanted to make sure she could always find me after that."

"Life got a lot more boring after that," Niall says. "Since Louis wasn't always going out exploring with us and causing trouble. I had to fight more than a few rats twice my size when he forced me into cracks in the wall to see what I could find."

"I didn't _force_ you-"

"Ya literally kicked me into at least two of those," Niall says but there's no malice behind his words. "Anyway, since then when we want to find something it's mostly me and Liam going out. She's got a library upstairs but it's a long hike since the stairs as all twice as tall as we are."

"Plus, we can't bring any of the books back with us, since they're all giant sized."

"Yeah, so I'm stuck here hoping they remember whatever they read long enough to tell me." Louis sighs. "I miss a lot of plot lines in books from that."

"Hey I got really good at that!" Liam interjects, "I can almost recite all the fairy tales from memory."

"Oh, but anyway," Niall says. "We can't leave the house. "We've tried more than a few times, but even the times when she's left the door or a window open, I think there's something stopping us. Taylor walks out like it's no problem but it's always... a bit like a void when we try to follow. It just forces us back." he shrugs. "Through the floor's the only way to go, I suppose."

"So, you just spend all day exploring then?" Harry questions. "Haven't you gotten through the whole house by now then?"

"Oh yeah," Liam says. "We've gone through the whole house a thousand times. Mostly at the moment we've been going through the library for information on breaking that chain."

Louis jangles the chain for emphasis. "And I just sit here and come up with more songs to sing, since it's the only thing I'm really good for."

"Wait, so you wrote those songs you sang this morning?" Harry's considerably impressed. "Those were so cool!"

"Well, pencils are as tall as I am, so I didn't write them technically," Louis says but he's clearly a little flattered. 

"Also, if we're going to go to the library today, we should probably get going pretty soon," Liam says. "If we want to get back in time for dinner, that is."

"Oh yeah!" Niall jumps to his feet. "Y'wanna come with us, Harry? Explore the house? How're your climbing skills?"

Harry's pretty sure his climbing skills are fairly abysmal but he doesn't say so. "I could give exploring a shot," he says. Niall and Liam look excited and ready to go, but a glance at Louis' face make Harry feel a little guilty. He's been stuck for a while and is probably more than a little sick of seeing just the same four rooms for so long.

Niall gives Louis a hug (which Louis squirms out of with a scowl) and steps out of the doll house, turning back expectantly for Liam and Harry to follow him.

The trek through the house is a long one, through the kitchen to the other end of the living room where the stairs are. Harry balks at those and decides that yes, he is certainly an absolutely horrible awful climber. Niall and Liam have apparently made it into an art form, how they lean on one another for support as they make their way up. They help Harry along too, but he's pretty convinced that he's not going to make it to the same level of climbing expertise as either of them any time soon.

Or ever, really.

Harry really sucks at climbing.

It's probably a good half hour by the time they've made it up the stairs into a dark carpeted hallway. It smells like dried flowers and vinegar and makes Harry gag just a little. They make their way down to the end of the hallway, Niall and Liam taking the time to fill Harry in on what they've been reading the last few days. It's a lot of fundamental magic rules that go right over Harry's head since he's never studied it in any form, but he plays along.

The library is absolutely stunning. That's probably because Harry is about half the height of any one of the books present and the room is floor to ceiling in shelves. It's also a little daunting because he has the feeling that if any of the books were to fall, they could probably crush him. That's not a comforting thought.

Niall and Liam lead him over to a red wingback which they've fashioned a makeshift ladder up the side of, and on it rests a large green leatherbound book. It takes two of them to open the cover up and then a while longer to pinpoint the page they apparently had been reading from the day before. Sure enough, it's a book about magic and curse-breaking, and Harry finds that really Niall spends most of their time reading the ridiculous sounding latin names out loud and giggling, while Liam tries in vain to concentrate on what he's reading; enough to remember it later when they get back to the doll house.

As much as Harry loves the library - it's beautiful and peaceful and smells less like vinegar than the hallway - he's not really any more helpful here than he was when the three of them were going up the stairs to get here. Reading isn't one of his best skills, it's just not something he's had much chance to practice, but the constant latin terms make it even more difficult and he finds himself mostly sitting in silence mouthing out the words as he reads them. He ends up leagues behind Liam and only gets about a fourth of the way through a page when Liam requests they turn it.

A few hours in the library (after the first Niall gets bored and starts climbing the shelves; Liam ignores him), Liam requests they head back. It's easier going down the stairs than up but only because if there's a skill Harry's good at, it's falling. He _probably_ won't have many new bruises the next day. Probably.

Harry can hear Louis' voice echoing through the house as they make their way through the sitting room. It's a little eerie with how quiet the house sounds otherwise. When they get through the doorway into the kitchen Niall starts joining in and they can hear Louis breaking off to laugh when Niall clearly starts to make up words.

The afternoon is filled with Liam trying out what he's learned to the chain around Louis' ankle, to no avail. Taylor arrives home and Louis sings for a much longer time in order to gain them a fair bit of steak. When she returns him with the teacup he's got a sore throat, and Liam boils him some water in hopes of helping. Louis sulks because apparently one thing that Taylor has never given them is, ironically, tea.

Harry's starting to realise that Liam is clearly the acting mom of the house when he declares bedtime a few hours later. Niall has already shown him the amazing room with the "indoor pumbing" (" _plumbing_ , it's _plumbing_ Niall") that creates such a wonderful hot bath. 

"Niall and I tend to share the one bed and Louis has the other," Liam tells Harry. "So I assume you can share with him. Right Louis?"

Louis shrugs from where he's already sprawled on the mattress. "Not like I have much of a choice. These beds are huge but I don't think any of you would make it out alive if you all three tried to share a bed. I can hear how much Niall moves in his sleep, if you slept any closer together, Liam would get black eyes on a regular basis."

"That's entirely true," Niall pipes up. "Sorry mate."

The beds really are about three times the size of the one Harry has back home, and as he settles in to it he finds that it's about ten times softer too. Liam flips the light switch and engulfs the room in darkness, and Harry finds that he's exhausted enough that sleep takes him almost immediately. He thinks that he's actually already been asleep for a few minutes when he wakes up to Louis whispering.

"Hey Harry. Harry. Haaaarry-"

He grumbles something incoherent in response.

"I'm sorry I was a dick. I was really embarrassed when the first time you saw me was covered in jam sitting in a teacup. That's fucking embarrassing."

Harry really appreciates the sentiment, but he also really wants to sleep. "S'fine," he slurs.

Louis laughs a little. "Alright, go to sleep Curly. Clearly, you already are."

Clearly, he already is.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait, I had to graduate Uni, and then get into Grad School.. you know how it goes.

Harry never had the most comfortable bed. It's not like there's anything wrong with it, per se, but it's a hand-me-down, older than he is, and stuffed with old straw where the original stuffing has fallen out.

When he wakes up, the first thing he notices in his groggy half-conscious state is that he feels as though he's laying on a cloud. For the first time in what he assumes is years, he's not woken up with a sore back. The blanket is thick and soft and so unlike his scratchy pile at home.

The second thing he notices is the mass that he's wrapped himself around is not his collection of pillows, but a squirming boy trying to get out of his grasp.

He jumps away, disentangling himself as fast as humanly possible, and moves as far to the opposite edge of the bed as he can. He knows his face is flaming red, can hear the blood pounding in his ears from embarrassment - he's just met this boy yesterday, and Louis hadn't even _liked_ him - and now Harry the Human Octopus has tried to suffocate him. "Sorry," he mumbles into the sheets.

"Shh, no no it's fine," Louis whispers. He's gingerly climbing out of the bed but at least he doesn't seem angry or annoyed like yesterday. "Go back to sleep, I just need to get up." He offers Harry a small pat on the head like he's a dog and fuck, Harry is hopelessly endeared.

Harry snuggles himself back under the covers and sleepily watches Louis move about. He disappears into the bathroom for a while and Harry can hear the faint tinking of the chain around Louis' ankle as he moves. When he emerges he's in a new outfit and Harry pretends to be asleep to try to save Louis from embarrassment when he spends a good minute trying to get into the teacup that's as tall as he is. Harry makes a mental note to find something Louis could use as a footstool.

Once Louis has struggled his way into the teacup, he sits down and disappears from Harry's view entirely. The room is still, Liam and Niall clearly still fast asleep, and Harry is slipping into dreamland again too until he's brought back to consciousness by the sound of the door to the kitchen they're in opening. 

Taylor walks in, flipping a switch next to the doorway that brings the room into blinding brightness. She's once again dressed in an outfit that looks nicer than anything Harry can remember his mother or Gemma owning. He wonders if she has a significant other, because the boys here make it sound like there's never anyone with her. Are fellow giants and giantesses hard to find? He's curious. Maybe he'll ask someone later.

She seems to be in a good mood, her heels clacking a quick rhythm on the tile floor as she weaves her way around the kitchen gathering breakfast. Retrieving a box from the cabinets, she sets it on the table with a bowl and spoon, and sets up the machine next to the sink so that it sputters and bubbles to life, spewing coffee into the pot below, the bitter smell wafting and filling the room.

She's humming to herself, her giantess vocal chords giving her the octave range of a church organ, the poor girl. Once he gets over the voice that doesn't match the face, though, Harry can admit to himself that she does sound quite nice.

Leaning over in front of the doll house now, Taylor reaches out to softly lift the mug from its spot in the bedroom. "Wake up little mouse," she says softly. Really, she's too large to say anything very softly, but she does try. 

She takes the mug over and places it on the table with her own freshly brewed cup of coffee. "How about that last song you ended with yesterday?" she asks. Louis says something, but it's soft and sleepy sounding and Harry doesn't catch it. He doesn't even pretend to be asleep now, ears straining to hear the lovely voice he knows Louis has. He doesn't disappoint, either, his voice like autumn leaves filtering out of that cup as Taylor pours herself something from the box to the bowl she has. He sings as she pours milk into the bowl afterward, and as she eats and drinks her coffee. His voice is sounding just a little rough by the end of the meal, and Harry feels the urge to make him hot tea with lots of honey to soothe his throat.

"Thank you little mouse," Taylor says and Harry wonders if she doesn't know that Louis has a name, or if it's a nickname. Either could be possible, he thinks. "Milk or no milk with the cereal, then?"

Harry hears Louis turn down the milk, and Taylor pours what must be cereal into the mug that Louis resides in, clinking and rustling as it fills the cup. 

She cleans up behind herself, bowl and mug in the sink, box in the cabinet, and carefully carries Louis' mug back to the doll house. Bidding a farewell, she makes her way across the tiles and out the door.

The second the door clicks shut behind her, Niall and Liam are up and out of their bed, and Harry realises they've probably already been awake for a while. He sits up, not ready to abandon the soft blankets that pool around him, but not wanting to be left out.

"Cereal!" Niall shouts. "What kind is it? Is it that chocolate stuff again? Or that whole grain shite this time?"

Liam leans over the edge of the teacup and offers Louis his arms to help pull him out, Niall bracing the mug from the other side to make sure it doesn't tip. The effort lands Louis on the floor with a thud, covered with what looks like sugar and crumbs. He's grinning though, a stark contrast from when Harry met him yesterday. "It's that obnoxiously sweet stuff you like, Niall. With the dried strawberries and shit."

Niall makes a delighted sound and begins trying to scoop his hands into the mug to retrieve his breakfast. Liam rolls his eyes as he dusts Louis' clothes down so that he looks less like he's rolled around on the floor of a bakery. 

"Found one!" Niall shouts as he grabs a large red dried piece of fruit and sits down next to the mug to devour it. 

"Jesus, Ni. Your manners decrease every day we're here," Liam says with a sigh. "I don't suppose anyone actually wants bowls for this."

Louis shakes his head. "Much too much work. Save the bowls for when our feet are on the ground again. Or the next time Taylor has yohgurt for breakfast."

"I hope she becomes lactose intolerant," Niall says. "You stank for days, old yohgurt does _not_ come out of clothes."

Harry inadvertently gags at the thought. Louis looks over at him and holds back a laugh. "Yeah, you should be glad you weren't here for that. I was afraid we'd have to move. Live in the sink or something." He motions to the mug behind him. "Come on, get yourself some breakfast. I bet sugary sweet is your thing."

"Can't actually remember the last time I had something that looks as sweet as that," Harry says, leaving his comfy nest to join the rest of them. "What is it, exactly?"

"Cereal," Liam says. "It's like, um, stale baked goods? But better. No, wait. That's a horrible description. It's not disgusting or stale. It's, um-"

"Just try some," Louis interrupts. "It's better than whatever Liam's trying to describe. Which, by the way, is croutons."

"Right," Liam says. "Fuck it, I have no clue how cereal is made."

Harry hesitantly sticks an arm into the mug and comes back with something ring shaped and powdery, larger than his hand. He takes a nibble and Liam's description was stunted at best but sort of accurate. "Like, stale sweet bread?" he says. "It's... good."

Louis gets up and grabs some for himself. "Yeah, close enough. Pretty delicious, no clue why we don't have something like this back home."

Harry agrees. It'd also be nice to have strawberries the size of his head, like the one Niall's eating. May be a bit unrealistic though.

They make small talk over breakfast, about delicious bakery foods and the best that Taylor has given them since she struck up this deal with them. Harry hopes that before long he'll get to try poptarts.

Liam eventually gets up, saying that they should really leave soon if they want to get any reading done today. Niall, ever the ball of energy apparently, jumps up to join him and they both turn to Harry.

Harry's been thinking about this. He's especially been thinking about the fact that he has no climbing ability and is less than proficient in reading. "Um..." he stalls. He doesn't want to be rude, and it would probably be pretty rude since the only thing they have going for them right now is their daily trek to the library to try to find a way out of this mess. But still... he'll clearly be of no help there. Maybe instead he could help Louis be a bit less lonely. Is that odd? That's probably odd.

They're all looking at him now, and Harry blushes because he's clearly acting like an absolute idiot. "I was just thinking, um... I'm not exactly the best climber, you know?" He knows he talks slower than a snail, and slower when he's nervous. "And I - I didn't really practice reading that much, growing up?" He looks at the three faces looking back at him, hoping that someone can help along his mumbling. This is embarrassing.

A little shocking to him, Louis comes to his rescue. "Harry," he says, sounding very serious. "Are you saying that you would rather spend the day being my personal entertainer than being a page-turner-in-training for Liam?" 

Harry gulps and nods. "It's just... I'm really not good at, well, any of that. So."

"Well," Louis says. "That settles that, then! Liam, I've officially stolen your young library intern. Ever tried writing songs, Harry?"

Harry shakes his head. "I could try, though? I like to sing to my cow." _Or, I did..._

"Hear that, Liam?" Louis turns to Liam, who looks a little like he doesn't quite know what's going on. "He sings to his cow! Perfect. I call him."

Harry's not sure if Louis is making fun of him or not. Maybe, he doesn't care.

Liam looks a little lost at this point, like this is something he could not have seen coming. Niall takes one look at his face and cackles madly. "Come on, Liam! Like you said, we'd better get going."

"I- Sure, yeah. Okay." Liam still looks utterly confused as to how he's lost a member of his expedition team, but he and Niall pull on boots and are on their way within a few minutes. "Do something with the cereal!" Liam calls behind him, a request which Louis acts as if he doesn't hear.

"By do something, he means stuff our faces," he whispers into Harry's ear as Liam and Niall trek across the kitchen floor a level below them. Harry stifles a laugh.

Louis excuses himself for a moment to change his clothes and wash some leftover sugar powder out of his hair. Harry sits in silence for a few moments before thinking that maybe he should spend his time doing something productive. Do something with the cereal, perhaps. He makes his way down the stairs to see if there's some kind of containers he could store it in. He hasn't thoroughly explored the kitchen, but now that he thinks about it, maybe they've kept around other ingredients from past meals. He always did like experimenting.

Louis is still in the bathroom (Harry can hear running water, which is still something he is _so impressed_ with), so Harry makes his way downstairs to the kitchen.

He doesn't notice it at first, as he's concentrating on searching through the cabinets. The cabinets themselves are fairly devoid of cooking ingredients, much to Harry's dismay. There's something in one corner that he thinks used to be toast and he really... doesn't want to touch it. He'll pretend he didn't see that. It's green.

It's when he's closing the last cabinet that he finally gets around to noticing the area in the window above the sink and the plant residing in the mixing bowl that certainly, certainly wasn't that big yesterday. He feels hope in his chest as he realises just how much this could mean to everyone else in this house (to himself too, but Harry's only been stuck here a couple days, he couldn't really compare). 

The plant is maybe three times the size that it was when they placed it on the sill, which is nothing like the growth that the seeds had of course, but the fact that it is still _alive_ is more than enough for Harry. It's curled around itself a few times and down into the sink, like a snake lounging in the sun. He wonders exactly how long it could take for it to become long enough to reach his home below, months at least. Liam would know.

All thoughts of the cereal have escaped his mind, and Harry is startled when Louis' voice comes down the stairs, "Harry! Have you run off already? Changed your mind about being my entertainment?"

Harry hurries upstairs. He'll tell about the plant later, he reasons. When it's (hopefully) grown more and everyone is here.

"Sorry," he says, clearing the top steps. "I was looking to see if there's any food in the cabinets downstairs. Something to mix with the cereal maybe."

Louis is laying across the bed Harry shares with him on top of the neat covers (Liam insists on everyone making the beds, he's such a mom). "Oh yeah, found nothing, did ya? We don't exactly have much in the way of cooking experience, between the three of us. Liam and I never needed to back home and Niall," he huffs out a laugh. "Niall says he's an excellent cook, actually, but every recipe he's wanted to recreate starts with potatoes, and we honestly don't get much in the way of those. Some chips every once in a while if we're lucky, but not much else." He sits up and leans against the headboard. "Just isn't our thing. What about you, then? Do you cook? Gonna start squirreling away baking ingredients?"

Harry blushes. He joins Louis on the bed, sitting on the opposite end and curling his legs under him. "It's always been a bit of a hobby of mine back home, but it's not really that big of a deal."

Louis shakes his head, "No, please! If you're a masterful genius in the kitchen, be my guest and bake away! Taylor's meals can get a little... repetitive after a number of years. We had pasta with red sauce every night for a month straight once."

"That sounds... rather disgusting," Harry wrinkles his nose and Louis laughs in agreement.

"We thought so too."

They fall into easy conversation, mostly centering around the food they've had here, adventures in the few times Niall did try to play chef, and Liam back when they had first arrived trying to throw together meals from what they could find before Taylor made the deal with them. Harry mostly sits and listens, happy that Louis is opening up so much after that unfortunate first day they spent together.

"So Hazza," Louis says at one point.

"Hazza?" Harry questions.

"Don't interrupt." Louis says sternly. "Hazza. How is it exactly that you got here? I've just realised I know very little about you."

_Could say the same about you,_ Harry thinks, but he doesn't say it because at this point he still feels fairly privileged that Louis has decided they're not enemies any longer. "Not really much to tell," he says instead. "My mum, um, she sent me into town. We live on a farm, right? And she sent me into town because we needed food, but,"

As his story unfolds, he's very aware of exactly how slow he speaks. Normally, surrounded only by his mum and sister and the animals of their farm, he's not particularly bothered by the plodding pace he takes. Now, however, he can feel his cheeks colour and the tips of his ears heat up as he realises just how slow he goes. Louis must be so bored already.

He chances a glance up at Louis' face as he explains exactly what flowers he adorned Dusty with, and is shocked (and quite pleased) to find that Louis is following along raptly, a smile on his face that isn't just for the sake of politeness. Even his sister is normally laughing at him at this point.

It's when Harry gets to the part about meeting the girls that Louis becomes an engaged listener, however.

"Harry, where did you say you were from?" 

"Um," he pauses, mid-explanation about the dresses the twins were wearing. "I didn't?"

Louis sighs, "Okay, but where _are_ you from?"

"It's, um, it's just south of York? A little town called Doncaster-"

"Was that man with the girls- was he our own age? Did he say his name?"

"He..." Did he say his name? Harry wracks his brain. "Yeah - it was something odd sounding. ...Zen?"

"Zayn?"

Harry furrows his brows as he locks eyes with Louis. "Yeah? That sounds like it. How do you... Do you know him?"

Louis' been in a moving house in the sky for _six years_. What are the chances?

Louis is looking very serious now, as if reviewing in his mind everything Harry has been saying since this conversation started. "Yeah I- I do. The girls? There were four girls? A set of twins, should be about seven now, and two older ones? Oldest one has light blond hair?"

Harry nods. "Who are they? You know them, right?"

Louis seems to come out of a trance. "Know them? I- fuck. I have to go, Harry. I have to find Liam."

He's on his feet almost as he says it, running down the stairs before Harry can even register what he's doing. "Louis-" he shouts as he realises.

A minute later are several thuds and muffled cursing from the floor below, and Harry is up and running after him.

"Are you okay?" He calls as he reaches the bottom of the stairs. Louis is lying sprawled out near the front of the room, the chain around his ankle taunt as it still connects to the teacup upstairs, which is still wobbling a little precariously from when Louis almost managed to pull it after him as he apparently momentarily forgot it was there.

"I- Fuck! I just, yeah- Fuck." Louis sits up, tugging uselessly at the chain and only worsening the welt that's appearing around his ankle. "Liam needs - I need to tell him. Zayn! Zayn's still there!" He looks like he's about to cry, might already be crying although from the fall or from whatever is going on in his head, Harry has no idea.

"Okay, um," Harry is totally lost as to what to do. "Liam will be back for lunch soon, right? Do you- do you think you could calm down? I'm not sure what's going on, but it's good, right?"

Louis might be hyperventilating at this point. He's pulled his legs up so his face is on his knees and his breathing is quite heavy, like he's just run a race. He's shaking a little, and in an attempt to calm himself he presses his palms to his eyes. "I... Yeah. Sorry. Just," He takes a deep, shaky breath. "You have no idea, Harry. You don't - They could have been the ones up here! What was he thinking, giving them those?"

"I'm sorry?" Harry asks. He's not even sure if Louis realises he's speaking out loud at this point. "Give who what?"

"M-my sisters," Louis chokes out. "My sisters had magic beans!"

He collapses in what could be laughter or tears, Harry's not sure. He's not even sure if there's a difference for Louis at this point. Tentatively, Harry scoots forward and places a hand on his back, rubbing soft circles on the fabric. "Your sisters?" He asks in awe. "Those were your sisters?"

Louis nods, his face still in his hands. He seems to have exhausted himself, although he's still shaking a little. "I can't believe - I've been trapped up here for _six years_ and our absolute idiot of a fairy godfather still felt fit to give them their own sets of magic beans as birthday presents. I swear if I make it down there to inherit the crown before my sister does, my first act will be to banish that fooking idiot to France."

Harry stares at him blankly. "The crown? The-" He feels like a number of puzzle pieces are clicking into place in his mind, and his hand stills on Louis' back. "You're - the missing prince? Those girls were your sisters, they're-" He sucks in a breath. "Fuck me! I didn't bow to the princesses! I've committed high treason!" A beat later, he looks down at Louis, "Double fuck me! I didn't bow to the crown prince! I'll be in jail for the rest of my life!"

Louis giggles, a little weakly. "Shut up, Hazza. It took me almost a year to convince Liam to stop bowing to me when we got stuck up here. Far as I can see it, I'm no more crown prince than anyone else here is until I'm on my own soil again." He looks up at Harry for the first time since his tumble down the stairs. "My sisters, however. That's a different story. How do you not recognise the crown princess? I knew you lived in a hole in the ground, but to not know who Lotte is!"

Harry sighs. At least he probably isn't going to jail. "The farm has sort of taken up all my time for about six years now. We don't get into town much, missed most of the coming of age ceremonies."

"No hired help?" Louis asks curiously.

"No... Times haven't exactly been the easiest." Harry realises now that he has left his hand resting on Louis' back for the better part of five minutes now and quickly removes it. One can't just going about touching crown princes. At least, not without their express permission.

Louis seems to sense that it's not a subject Harry likes to talk about (it's a fairly easy thing to sense, really), and changes the subject. "Tell me, then. Start at the beginning. Tell me absolutely everything about them. What did they look like? How are they doing? Everything you remember, spare no details."

Harry nods and immediately launches into descriptions of each of the girls, as best he remembers them. He doesn't mention that they're still sitting in the middle of the floor and Louis' leg is still pulling the chain taunt. Clearly, he is not one to get in the way of news of siblings after six years of knowing nothing. He can't imagine losing touch with Gemma for that long.

Louis fills in things like names and ages as he talks, and the love for them is clear in his voice. It makes Harry hope desperately that the plant in the kitchen grows quickly, that Liam and Niall find a way to break the spell on the chain.

Louis makes sure Harry tells him everything about Zayn as well, although he says he'll have to repeat all of it once Liam comes back. He tells Harry that Zayn and Liam had been best friends growing up working in the palace together, and maybe even a bit closer than that. Ever since the two of them had climbed the beanstalk, Liam has been terribly afraid that Zayn ended up being blamed for their disappearance, since the three of them had been fast friends.

It feels like years of anticipation as they wait for Niall and Liam to arrive back home.


	4. Chapter 4

It's well after noon by the time Liam and Niall arrive back. Louis says they don't like to trek to the library more than once a day so they'll just spend the rest of the afternoon in the house unless Niall ends up getting especially bored.

Eventually, Harry and Louis had gotten off of the topic of family back home, but Louis said he was much too keyed up to think about songwriting, so they've spend the time mostly staring at the ceiling and nibbling on cereal as Louis belts out bits of lyrics from songs he's sung for Taylor. 

They hear Niall before they see either of them approaching, his Irish lilt booming out, "Harry! Louis! How much did you miss us!"

"Not at all!" Louis calls back, "Didn't even know you'd left!"

"Ah stuff it, ya know ya missed me!" Niall's footsteps echo as he bounds up the stairs and makes a flying leap toward the two of them, landing more or less on Louis, who immediately struggles to get out from under his weight.

"Ooph - Niall, you fat arse! Is that any way to treat a royal?" he groans, pushing Niall onto the ground.

"Yer not _my_ royal!" Niall shouts. "I can treat you however I want!"

"Yeah but damage my precious vocal chords and we'll see how you feel when Taylor stops giving us food! You've grown fat in your complacency!" 

Niall makes an offended noise and lunges for Louis again. "Not the food! I swear I didn't mean any of it, your Royal Brattiness! I pledge my undying loyalty to your ability to feed us for another day!"

"Niall," Liam interjects, "you've been telling me for a good hour how starving you are and now I think you were just getting lazy. We could have read another chapter!"

Niall whines. "I'm being abused from all sides! Of course I was hungry Liam, see?" He jumps over to the teacup and stuffs half a piece of cereal in his mouth. With full cheeks, he turns to Harry, "You're on my side, aren't ya, Harry? I don't deserve this abuse!"

Harry holds up his hands, "I think I probably want to stay on the side of my own royalty for this one, Niall, sorry!"

Liam turns to Louis with a questioning look. "You told Harry? It took months before you let that slip to Niall!"

"Yeah!" Shouts Niall, still with a full mouth (or again?), "I'm very offended!"

"No, Liam listen!" Louis' eyes light up, as if he had forgotten in the heat of the moment what Harry and he had been talking about all morning. "He's met them, Harry has! The beans he got were from Daisy and Phoebe!"

Liam looks like he's been hit by a truck. "What? How is that possible?"

He turns to Harry, who shrugs. "I dunno, I didn't know who they were at the time. They were just a particularly excited set of siblings who seems to be able to give Dusty a good home. Now that I think about it, I feel like they should have been able to pay actual money for her, instead of beans...That would have been a better idea for everyone involved."

"All my sisters are very conniving," Louis says. "They could probably convince Santa himself to give them twice the Christmas presents of they tried."

"Yeah, I'd say you were doomed from the start," Liam adds.

Liam insists on hearing about each sister individually, just as Louis did. The difference now being that Louis interrupts Harry every ten seconds or so to add in what Harry has already told him, or bring up memories with Liam about things his sisters had done back when they were living in the palace.

The topic of Zayn is brought up fairly quickly and Liam, upon hearing that Zayn is still working at the palace, seems to get a little teary-eyed. No one mentions it. 

Niall spends most of these conversations sitting a little ways back, munching on cereal and laughing at all of the embarassing moments that Louis brings up (all of them seem to end up with Liam being the one embarrassed, Harry notes). As Harry has exhausted all of the information he can add, he scoots himself over to sit next to Niall.

"What about you?" he asks when Niall turns a questioning eye on him. "Got anyone back home you're missing?"

"'Course I do," Niall says. His usually enthusiastically cheerful manner is a little dulled now. "Doesn't everybody? But it's no big deal. I'll see her again before too long I s'pose." He shrugs as if it's not a big deal, having been caught here for three years.

"Harry reaches over and ruffles Niall's hair until he pouts at him. "None of that," he chides. "False sense of bravado or whatever it is you're doing. Tell me about her."

Niall shrugs again, which Harry takes to mean as he clearly cares an awful lot more than he wants to let on. "Her names Melly. Headstrong and has the willpower of an ox," he says, and his eyes seem to light up as he talks. "Could never talk her out of anything once she set her mind to it. I think that's how she ended up in Ireland in the first place. Met her when we were ten, she was trying to smuggle oranges out of an orchard by sticking them down her blouse, thought for sure she had some horrible disease."

They both laugh at this, a little softly as Liam and Louis are still speaking of their own home in excited tones.

"She's got a birthday soon, if I've kept track of time right," he says. "Last time I saw her, she demanded I give her a ring as a present. Said we needed one as a symbol of our friendship, and she wouldn't be my friend anymore unless I got her one." He chuckles, a little wetly. "I was so upset that she seemed to think all we had was a friendship, that instead of a ring I got her a necklace. I thought, I can't give her a ring because then she'll know we're just friends, so I gave her the necklace so I could say it's close enough, but I wanted more." He shook his head. "Never got the chance to give it to her anyway."

Harry frowns. He doesn't know how to comfort him, the boy has been gone for three years, so who knows what's happened to Melly by now. He settles for just rubbing his back. "My sister Gemma was supposed to be married last year, but we couldn't pull together enough money for the dowry unless we sold the whole farm. She still sees the guy in secret, but they could never actually be together."

Niall pulls him in for a hug. "If we get out a' this stupid house, I'll pay your sister's dowry _and_ buy you a new farm," he says emphatically.

Harry laughs, "I don't know how rich you think you are, farms are pretty expensive."

Niall just winks at him with a mischievous grin. "You never know, mate. Louis turned out to be a prince, didn't he? I could be a king!"

Harry smiles, "Sure, yeah. Go ahead and buy me a new farm then."

\---

He shows them the plant later that night, after Taylor has gone to bed and left everyone with large amounts of bread and red sauce and cheese. Louis says it's pizza but the piece she gives is, of course, giant-sized and so they really can't eat it that well without getting themselves covered in sauce.

Louis and Niall run for the bathroom, a race to see who can get there first and claim the shower, while the other has to clean up using the sink. Liam rolls his eyes and suggests to Harry that they share the kitchen sink downstairs.

The plant looks to be the same size as when Harry found it that morning, but in the light of the moon filtering through the window, it seems to have come alive. The plant moves in an invisible breeze, making its way up to press its fragile green leaves against the window to soak up the moonbeams.

"Whoa..." Liam's mouth hangs open and he approaches it almost as if it's a wild animal, something he can scare away. Harry wants to touch it, see if it'll curl around his arms like a snake, but gets his hand slapped away by Liam the second he gets close.

He sends his best pout in Liam's direction because that was _rude_.

"You're covered in sauce," Liam gestures to his forearms and well, he does have a point. "At least wash your hands first."

He does so, as does Liam, and reaches out to caress the vine, which moves slowly around his arm to position itself toward the window once again.

"I can't believe it's actually growing," Liam murmurs, watching in apparent awe.

"I think it really likes the moon," Harry says. "It doesn't look much bigger than when I looked at it this morning, but it's certainly growing fast now."

It has a rather hypnotizing force, slowly but steadily growing them a way home, and Liam and Harry spend a few moments just watching it. Moments that are interrupted by Niall clunking down the stairs demanding to know what is taking them so long.

"Ah, sweet!" he says when he sees what they've been looking at. "Did we name it yet?"

"What?" Harry asks.

"You know," Niall says. "Like how ships get names and stuff. This'll carry us home, so it's like a ship, right? It needs a name. I'm thinking The Craic."

"I don't know what that means," Harry says. "But I don't think I want to name it that. It's small and cute. It should have a small and cute name."

"All right," Niall concedes. "Little Craic."

\---

The night turns to day, and the day washes into night again, and life for the four of them becomes routine. Harry wakes up most mornings to the sound of Louis singing for their breakfast, and is introduced to a wild number of new foods, like waffles and pancakes and one thing he wasn't particularly fond of called a granola bar.

Liam and Niall go off every day to the library, searching for a way to break the chain. Most nights they come home empty handed. Sometimes Liam will think that he's onto something and recite a spell or list ingredients needed for a potion to pour on it. The most that has ever happened though are a couple flashes of light and a small fire in the carpet after one particularly lengthy incantation. They don't give up though, what else do they have to do with their time anyway?

Harry and Louis spend their days bouncing lyrics and melodies off of each other. Harry learns almost all of Louis' songs by heart, and finds that he's really not too bad with creating new ones, when he puts his mind to them.

Little Craic (the name has stuck, which Harry finds rather unfortunate) continues to grow, albeit only during the nighttime. It's not a particularly speedy growth, but with time and patience it begins to spread itself all across the countertop like a lazy boa constrictor. Harry once heard that singing to plants helps them grow, so he and Louis spend some days practicing in the kitchen. It probably doesn't make a difference.

Harry thinks a lot about home, especially in the quiet hours of the night when everyone has laid down and begun to fall asleep. He hopes his mum and Gemma have been able to hold the farm together, feels incredibly guilty that he's not there to help, basically abandoned them when life became tough. Of course he didn't do it on purpose, he reasons with himself, but that's still not much in terms of consolation.

The thing is, is that while they've fallen into a routine that makes them feel quite productive, the truth of the matter is that Harry feels like nothing's really changing. At least, nothing about their situation. Day by day, Harry feels like he finds new things about Louis that he enjoys. His sense of humour and the way he hides his face when he laughs, the way he likes to pull pranks on all the boys and laugh at people but will defend Harry the second anyone finds something about him to make fun of, the things he likes continue to add up. But. They're no closer to getting Louis free of the oversized teacup, and while the beanstalk is growing and covered in rich green leaves, it's clearly nowhere like the speed of the stalks that brought each of them up here. He wonders if there's not enough magic left in it to get them home again.

He doesn't voice this though, doesn't want to be a damper. But he does keep thinking, brainstorming when he gets time alone with his thoughts. There must be something they can do. Louis and Liam especially, have been gone so long, they must be missing home so much more than their banter lets on. Louis has spoken so many times of his sisters, stories of their childhood, and Harry can _see_ the love that makes his eyes go soft. He has to find a way home soon.

\---

It all happens very fast, is the thing.

It's late afternoon, the sun is lower in the sky but Taylor won't be walking in the door for probably another hour or two. Liam and Niall have already arrived back from their daily trip to the library, and the four of them are lounging in the living room downstairs. Niall is stretched out across the couch, Louis is lounging in the wingback closest to the stairs because it's the only one he can comfortably sit in with how far his chain stretches. Liam is in the other wingback, and Harry is laying on the floor near Louis' feet. Out of pure boredom, they've begun a word association game.

"Watermelon."

"Noodles."

"Strawberries."

"Salmon."

"Nuts."

Louis and Harry suppress giggles and share a high five.

"Squash."

"Fuck, nothing starts with an 'H', that's not fair!"

"That's the point of the game, Niall."

"Oh nooo, Niall," Louis laughs, because Niall is always the first one out of the game. 

"No wait, holly berries!" Niall shouts.

"I think those are poisonous," Harry says. "That probably doesn't count."

"It definitely does! My cousin ate some once and he lived!"

"Okay, but I ate dirt when I was a baby and we wouldn't have counted that!"

"Yeah," Louis adds gleefully. "When Liam was a baby he used to lick wallpaper!"

Liam groans. "That is not at all relevant and I wish you would stop bringing that up."

"Never."

The game, which has devolved into arguments as usual, is interrupted by a loud cracking noise.

"What the fuck is that," Niall murmurs, sitting up and trying to look for the source of the noise.

The cracking comes again, louder now like it's closer than before, that has all of them frantically looking around for the source of the noise. There's no change to the scenery however, and all goes silent for a moment until - 

Taylor walks through the door.

At the same time the floor in the middle of their living room explodes upward, revealing the very top of a leafy beanstalk and a brunette with a huge smile on her face and an ax strapped to her back.

"Niall!" she shouts. 

"Uh-" Niall says. 

"Niall!" she shouts again, jumping out of the hole with surprising grace and running toward Niall, who sits looking dumbfounded, apparently just remembering to raise his arms to embrace the hug he's receiving.

"Melly-" he says, muffled through her hair. "Melly you- Uh-" he swallows and his eyes look a little wet. "You have a battle axe."

Melly laughs. "Took me almost four years to find you, I was making sure nothing could get in my way this time." She plants a kiss on his cheek and his pale skin reddens considerable. It's rather adorable.

Harry has never seen Niall lost for words before, and finds it to be quite a delightful experience. All the same, though, he starts to realise what this means.

This girl - Melly - has come up here through a beanstalk, and the beanstalk is still here. They have a way down - they have freedom!

No, but Louis doesn't have freedom. 

Harry has realised over the last couple of months, as time has stretched out here, that there's no way he would get out of here and leave Louis. That boy deserves the world, Harry thinks, and if he can't have the world then he can at least have his little loyal group of Harry (and Liam) for as long as he wants them there.

Taylor is still pulling off her coat and depositing her stuff near the door. Melly is still embracing Niall, taking no notice of the other three who are sitting around the room. Louis looks like he might cry, and Harry knows he's thinking about the same thing Harry is. This doesn't mean freedom for him.

Harry gets up from his spot on the floor, not particularly noticed as he slips upstairs to stand at the edge of the room where the missing wall is. He takes a deep breath.

"Taylor!"

And well, he's not good for much but he's good for this. He's never been the most intelligent, hasn't had much going for him besides his optimism, but if he can do one thing for Louis, it'll be this. He'll get him home again.

Taylor has never acknowledged the presence of anyone beside Louis the entire time Harry has been staying here, and he was starting to wonder if she could even see the rest of them, but when he calls her name she turns around to gaze at the doll house. Harry waves her over. Everything about the way she moves is rather peaceful, he thinks as she walks over.

"You're not my regular little mouse," she says when she bends down to be face to face with him. Face to face with a giant is rather terrifying, Harry thinks to himself. He thinks the floor below him has gone quiet, but that might just be the pounding in his ears deafening him to everything else.

"I'm not," he says. "My name's Harry."

"Yes I know," she replies. "You're the newest little mouse. Only appeared here about a month ago."

Oh. She knows more than she lets on. "Right, well," he swallows. "I want to make a deal," he says. 

"A deal," she repeats.

He nods fervently. "Yes. I want you to switch Louis and me." She doesn't immediately turn him down, which is a good sign. He takes a breath and continues. "I want to be the one to sing for you. Would you take the chain off of Louis' ankle and put it on mine?"

He seems to ponder for a moment. He _knows_ it's silent downstairs now. "I've heard you sing," she says eventually. Harry starts to wonder if she really does leave during the day. "You're very good. Do you know all of his songs?"

"I do, yeah."

"I suppose I can do that then," she says, and Harry breathes an internal sigh of relief. "Little Mouse!" she calls, turning her attention to the floor below him. "Come upstairs, please."

"No."

Louis' voice sounds very small after Taylor's booming baritone.

"Yes," says Taylor. "Come on, I think he's being very sweet. Why aren't you letting him be sweet? This is probably, like, true love or something."

Okay, thinks Harry. That's not how he would have wanted Louis to find that out. But okay.

"No," says Louis again, his voice rising. "I'm not letting him do that."

Taylor pouts. "Well I was going to do it the nice way," she says, "but if you want to be a macho baby about it..." She grabs the tea cup from the room Harry is in and gingerly lifts it up in one hand, the other hand cradling the chain attached to it. With careful maneuvering, she brings the cup out of the dollhouse and pulls the end of the chain up the stairs, bringing a very upset Louis cursing and struggling, with it.

She places the cup in her lap and sets Louis down in the palm of her hand. He's clearly still struggling against her, but there's little anyone can do against the strength of a giant, and she waits until he's tired himself out before unclasping the chain around his ankle and, a little unceremoniously, dumping him next to Harry in their bedroom.

Landing in a heap on the floor, the look Louis gives Harry is oddly reminiscent of his first day, and Harry feels his cheeks heat up wants to run and hide. The idea of Louis disapproving of this plan hadn't really occurred to him. He keeps himself together, though, long enough to climb into Taylor's awaiting palm.

It's quite a soft palm, Harry notes, and smells faintly of lavender.

She's gentle as she attaches the metal clasp at the end of the chain onto his ankle, and everything is starting to feel very real and irreversible.

"I'll be another couple minutes I think, Little Mouse," Taylor says to him as she places him back in the doll house, "and then we can have dinner, okay?"

Harry nods, watching her get up and walk away. He's not particularly sure he wants to turn around and face Louis.

"Harry," Louis says. Harry forces himself to turn around. Louis does _not_ look happy.

"Harry," he says again. "Why the hell did you do that? The way home is downstairs! There is a literal hole in the floor just waiting for you!" He looks angry, like he's about ready to start a fistfight with whatever he can reach. Harry takes an involuntary step back. The chain around his ankle clinks as he moves.

"N-no," Harry stutters, shaking his head vehemently. "I'm not the one who's been here six years, Lou. I'm not the one heir to the throne, either, or the one with four siblings waiting for them back home. That's your way home, not mine."

Louis shakes his head and opens his mouth to argue again, but Harry reaches out and grabs his wrist. He tugs Louis behind him as Louis spits protests at him and resists his grip. Harry, not used to the chain around his ankle, trips more than a few times as he goes down the stairs and misses the last few entirely, taking Louis with him to land in a heap on the floor.

Liam, Niall and Melly are watching them warily.

"I'm not just going to leave you," Louis hisses, pulling himself to his feet.

"Liam," Harry groans, sitting up and rubbing his newly bruised calf. "Tell him. Tell he has to leave."

Liam looks rather reluctant to tell anybody anything. "Lou..."

"No!" Louis shouts. "I'm not leaving somebody behind, especially not Harry! At least when we arrived here there were two of us! I'm not leaving him here all alone!"

Harry doesn't particularly want to be left all alone either, but he doesn't want Louis to miss his chance to leave, so he keeps his mouth shut, lest his heart speak for him.

There's a stare off between Louis and the rest of the room for a tense minute.

"Right," Melly breaks the silence. "I hate to do this, but we really don't have all day. Literally. We've got maybe five minute before the house moves far enough away from my beautiful little beanstalk and I, for one, am not sticking around." She wraps Niall in another tight hug, which he returns full heartedly, and then walks over to Louis. "Listen," she says. "I hate to do this to you, especially seeing as you are heir to the crown and all you Highness, but I bunked off to Ireland a long time ago so I suppose it's okay." She bends down, grabs Louis around the waist, and pulls him up over her shoulder, despite his shrieks of protest.

"Sorry Lou," Niall says. "But Harry's right, you need to come with us." He runs over to Harry and tackles him in a tight hug, which Harry returns. "I'm serious about your sister's dowry," Niall tells him. "I'll find her, don't worry."

Liam jogs over and gives a quick hug as well, with a promise to make sure Louis makes it home safely.

FInally, Louis manages to wriggle out of Melly's grip and runs back to Harry, throwing his arms around him last. "I'm coming back," he whispers. "It's extremely rude of you to do this to me."

"Come on then," Melly calls. "I'm going down and if the three of you aren't behind me I'll throw a right fit with this axe! And nice to meet you, Harry!" She's down the hole and out of sight in a blink, and Niall follows. Liam and Louis leave after, Louis giving a regretful wave to Harry before Liam pulls him down.

And Harry is alone in the house with a chain on his ankle and a hole in the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reach me at ladylondonderrytea on tumblr!
> 
> Can I just say that I started writing in Melissa like an hour before that article saying she and Niall had split? Like, ignoring that she might have been a stunt I'm all sorts of upset that they had to dump her just as I was writing her in! The nerve!


	5. Chapter 5

Harry learns pretty fast why it was that Louis wore trousers that had buttons all down the side. 

The first night he takes a shower after everyone else has left, he finds that when he slides the trousers off they just end up tangled in the chain. It's unfortunate, he thinks, that Louis is so much smaller than he is, because none of the trousers he's left behind could possibly fit Harry's long legs.

It turns out, life in a silent house is quite lonely.

He spends the first couple days exploring every inch of the house that the chain will reach to. The books on the shelves are all fake, and the fine china in the cupboards is made of something much lighter and less breakable. He covers the hole in the floor in the middle of the living room with a rug, but finds that he doesn't trust himself not to accidentally trod on it, and shoves the low table over it instead. He figures that if Little Craic ever gets long enough, he can feed it through the hole, although that still doesn't solve the problem of the chain.

He tugs on it, just absentmindedly. Sometimes he thinks he can slip it off if he just tugs hard enough, and ends up with bruises for a week. It doesn't stop him from trying again though.

He sleeps for a long time out of sheer boredom, but eventually even gets bored of sleeping.

Taylor actually becomes the highlight of his days. She's actually not a bad conversationalist, or at least he's so starved for conversation that it doesn't take much to impress him. After the first day or two he doesn't sing for her any more, just asks about her days and her life. He's desperate to hear the sound of somebody's voice beside his own.

She works as a music producer, she tells him, and then has to explain exactly what that is. He's still not sure he really understands the concept, someone who helps other people make and sell their music. He hasn't actually heard of anyone selling music beside when the royal orchestra comes to the city, but he's never had money enough to go listen anyway. She says there are groups of people who travel the world with only a few instruments, and everyone knows the lyrics to the songs they sing. He thinks it sounds nice, although quite unrealistic.

Taylor also mentions that it's nice that she can finally put her library back in order without little mice disrupting everything. He wonders once again exactly how much she knows, but then takes back when she informs him that there is nothing but dirt and ground under the house. She clearly has no idea what's going on.

Once Taylor leaves the kitchen, however, life becomes very tiresome and quiet and boring once again. Harry misses the conversation, the banter, the sound of voices echoing around the house. The bed feels much too big for just one person. It smells like someone not there anymore.

He talks to Little Craic. He tells the plant about his friends, about the stories they told him from back home. He talks about Gemma, about how he hopes Niall wasn't just trying to make him feel better, that he really will help her with the dowry money. 

Little Craic doesn't ever say anything back, but he is an excellent listener.

Taylor is _not_ an excellent listener, but the more she speaks, the more Harry starts to think that she's terribly lonely, close friends must be hard to find in her line of work, and there's probably a reason she jumped on the chance to keep one of them there with her. So he listens.

But at the end of the day, the week, maybe even the month at this point, Harry thinks he's lonelier than she is.

\---

One night, that starts after one particularly long day of Harry staring at the ceiling and trying to recite as many species of flowers as he can possibly remember, when Harry is snuggled down deep under the thick blankets of his bed (winter has come on, and although the house is warmer than the view outside the window, it's still chilly), when all the lights are out and the house is dark, there is a noise.

That being said, there are always noises. All houses creak in the night. Harry's mum used to say that houses come alive just a little bit in the nighttime, that all houses are built with just enough magic to wake up at night and check that everyone sleeping inside is safe.

So Harry doesn't really take notice. He wakes just enough to realise that something woke him, and that he would much rather still be asleep.

That being said, when he wakes because of a noise a mere ten minutes later, he's not quite as ready to fall back asleep. It takes a few minutes. But he still doesn't want to be awake, so he wills himself back into that peaceful slumber and that dream he can't quite remember.

The third time he wakes, it's not just _a noise_. It's really more of a _thud, thud, thud_ and a _crash_ and a whispered _"shit,"_ and a mumble of _"Why'd he move the fucking table,"_ and an "Oh careful I think there's a hole under that," and Harry might be very much awake.

That being said, this seems quite similar to the dream he was having, and he doesn't want to risk reality hitting hard. He keeps his eyes closed and prays that he's not hallucinating. 

"Did he reorganise the furniture?"

"Wouldn't blame him, bet it was fucking boring, it's been almost two months!"

"Shit guys, do you think he's even still here?"

"Liam, I'm pretty sure he doesn't have anywhere else to go."

"Yeah but-"

"Shh we don't need a Debbie Downer. I didn't come down from Ireland just for you to go all Mum Mode on us again."

There's sounds of feet on the stairs and there's light in the room now, the back of Harry's eyelids going all red and orangey. He wants to open his eyes, see it all true, but he doesn't want to open his eyes and find a dream again.

"Hazza, you'd better wake up right now, because it's my birthday and I don't think you want to go about disappointing a crown prince now, do you?"

Harry takes a deep breath. "I don't want you to not be real," he mumbles.

"Lord have mercy, you've brought me up here to find the village idiot."

Harry's eyes crack open and he feels his cheeks heat up. That's not a voice he recognises and he wonders if he really did dream the other ones. Did he just embarrass himself in front of some complete stranger who wandered in here? He wants to sink into the ground and never be seen again. He's not even sure who said that but he's sure life was much better twenty minutes ago when he hasn't made an apparent fool himself in front of the only humans he'd seen in months.

"Hey, shut up!" Now _that's_ a familiar voice, high and thin and comforting. "It's your fault he's ended up here in the first place, all we're asking is you fix the mistakes _you_ caused."

It's Louis. The voice is Louis.

That might be worth opening his eyes for.

It's not a disappointing sight, it turns out. Right in front of his face is, just as advertised, a little blue eyes crown prince. Behind him, Harry can see Liam and Niall and someone coming up the stairs that he thinks is probably Zayn.

Next to Louis is someone Harry has never met before. While Louis has a smile of literal sunshine, this man seems a little, one could say, unhappy to be here. He's an older man that Harry would place somewhere in the middle age range, which doesn't quite mix well with the... shimmery pink fairy wings he seems to be in possession on.

But nevermind that, Louis is here.

"Hello," says Louis.

He's _here_ and he's _real_ and sometimes in the darkest hour of the night Harry would roll over and wonder if he had been imagined all along but now he's looking at Harry with soft eyes and a triumphant smile like nothing in the universe could be more fulfilling than this moment.

Harry tries to stutter out a reply but nothing emerges. Certainly nothing along the lines of _I've been so lonely here and I've missed everyone terribly but I've missed you the most_ , which is what he screams on the inside.

"Louis!" Harry mumbles, his voice deep and rough from sleep. He's probably smiling like an idiot right now. He doesn't really care.

"Harry!" Louis echoes back. "Come on, up and at 'em, Sleeping Beauty. We've got places to go that involve anywhere but here." He offers a hand to Harry and helps hoist him upright and out of bed, Harry all but stumbling into his arms.

Wow, real human contact feels _wonderful_. 

"Harry!" Niall calls, running over and enveloping him in a hug. "How's things been? What ya been up to?"

Harry laughs. "Oh, you know. Stuck in a dollhouse. Foods that start with 'H' include Haddock."

Niall takes a moment before he gets the reference, and then he's hugging Harry tighter. "You need to get out more," he says before letting go.

"Speaking of," Liam says, "I'd really not like to stay here much longer. I think six years was about long enough."

The man who came up the stairs last, who must be Zayn, puts his arm around Liam and nods. "Cool place, but I think the one back home is a bit nicer."

Louis rolls his eyes. "He insisted on coming," he explains to Harry. "Complained the whole way up, he did."

"Like you didn't!" Zayn argues.

"I hate to interrupt..." the man next to Louis speaks up, his voice sounds rather judging, Harry's not sure he likes it. "But I've got somewhere to be. Can we get this over with?"

"Shut your mouth, Simon," Louis huffs. "Let us have our touching reunion."

Simon rolls his eyes. Louis giggles and pulls Harry with him as he backtracks toward the stairs. "Come on, I think you've been here long enough."

"But-" Harry argues. He can hear the chain clinking as he walks. 

"Simon!" Louis shouts. "You can take care of that, can't you?" he points to Harry's ankle. 

Simon, small fairy wings fluttering behind him, growls, "Of course I can. Do I look incompetent to you?" He pulls from his pocket a small, very pink, wand and points it at Harry's ankle, muttering things about how he can move mountains and build castles and all they want him for is breaking chains.

A spark of light flies out of the wand and hits the silver cuff, cracking it neatly in two. Harry feels it fall and reaches down to rub at the sore spots self consciously. "Thanks," he murmurs.

"Come on, then!" Louis says. He's excited, so excited. His small hand encloses Harry's and tugs him down the stairs, everyone else moving aside so that they can go first, and following them after. "No beanstalk this time," Louis says. He's practically bouncing off the walls in excitement. "Guilt tripped my fairy godfather into giving us a classier exit. After all, he's the one who told me I'd find true love by planting them and then forgot to give us a way home again."

Harry chokes, tripping on the carpet as Louis leads them to the back of the living room. "True- true love?"

"Well yeah," Louis says. "Let me tell you how boring life down there is without your dumb jokes and curls obstructing my view." he turns and angles a grin at Harry. "I need to a spouse before I inherit the crown, by the way. What do you think about a spring wedding?"

Harry thinks he might have died. "I-is this a joke?"

Louis stops and turns around to face him. "Harry," he says. "I'm not kidding. Six years I spent stuck up here in this house, but none of that time compares with the last month with you." He sighs, bending down to get on one knee, still clasping Harry's hand. "Alright, I suppose I'll do this proper. Harold Edward, will you do me the favour of getting hitched to the crown prince?"

Harry stares at him. "My name's not Harold," is all he manages.

Louis lightly slaps his cheek. "Try again. That's not an answer."

"Oh, I mean, yes? Yes. That sounds good." he nods, his brain finally catching up with him. "Fantastic, actually. I'd like that. Yes."

"Good." Louis shoots him a grin and gets up off his knees, shouting behind him. "Now I don't have to third wheel with you two all the time!" he shouts. Harry turns to see Liam and Zayn standing at the bottom of the stairs, clutching one another's hands and smiling sheepishly.

"Ah mate, that's no fair!" Niall calls. "I don't have my lovebird here, I'll have to settle for old cranky pants!" he points to Simon, who doesn't look impressed.

"Come on, I've got a royal christening in France in an hour," Simon says. "Hurry it up."

Louis rolls his eyes this time. "After you," he says, motioning for Harry to go out the front door of the dollhouse.

Which, Harry always thought that door was fake. The windows to the left and right look out directly onto the kitchen wallpaper outside, and the door handle has never budged when he's tried to turn it. Now, however, he grasps it and the door swings open easily.

On the other side of the door is blue sky, a stark contrast to the darkness outside the kitchen window. He walks out the door and finds himself on a little platform that turns into a spiral staircase that winds down, down, down, through the sky until it disappears in the clouds.

"It's a bit of a walk," Louis says behind him. "But I didn't fancy having to climb down a beanstalk again. It's a little perilous."

\---

He wasn't kidding when he said it was a bit of a walk. Harry is quite glad the staircase includes a railing because he feels like he might have otherwise collapsed from exhaustion and fallen right over the edge.

They descend the dizzying staircase for what feels like hours; Harry, Louis, Simon, Zayn, Liam, and Niall last. At the last moment, Niall had run back into the kitchen and grabbed Little Craic, wrapping the stalk around himself like an odd scarf, claiming he didn't want it feeling neglected.

The clouds thin out and birds swoop overhead. Misty green below turns into pasture, although Harry doesn't fancy too many looks down, because he feels quite dizzy already.

Eventually, though, he's able to make out a farm house not too far off. The shape of it is familiar, although the roof is brand new, and milling about on the grass outside are a number of fat dairy cows.

"Louis, where exactly are we?" Harry asks.

"Conveniently," Louis says. "I'd say about a hundred meters from where your beanstalk shot up." he's grinning ear to ear, clearly too smug to hold it in any longer.

Another twenty twirls around the staircase and Harry feels his feet land on real ground. Louis comes up next to him and Harry clutches his hand. This feels absolutely unreal, like a dream come true. The farm house in front of them no longer looks beaten down and sad, the chicken coop is large and new, there are cows out back and Harry thinks he can see goats too in the distance.

"Niall and I thought we could help out a bit, while you were indisposed." Louis squeezes his hand. "Did you know Niall is second in line for the Irish crown? I think it's rude he never mentioned it. Your sister's wedding is in a month, by the way."

Harry might be crying. He thinks it's justified. He pulls Louis in for the tightest hug he can possibly give.

"Ooh, are we group hugging now?" Niall shouts, and jumps on them. Liam and Zayn pull him off. 

"This is Harry's special day," Zayn chastises. "You can do group hugs tomorrow."

Niall whines and plops onto the grass. "But I send his sister a dowry like a promised! I want a special day too!"

"Your special day was the day we hit the ground two months ago when you and Melly got hitched," Liam says. 

Harry is half paying attention to their conversation, but all thoughts of congratulation (or thanking) Niall go out the window when the front door of the farm house opens and an older woman emerges. "Mum," he chokes out as she runs to meet him and envelop him in a hug.

"I'm a little late, Mum," he says, hugging her back just as tight. "But I brought back a husband."

"Oh, Harry," she laughs wetly. "That's not quite right. But I suppose we'll make do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, I suppose that's how you turn what was supposed to be 5k into 20k. Ah well. I hope you enjoyed! Really. Like, I really REALLY hoped you enjoyed. My blood and tears went into this for christssake! (*Disclaimer: I may be exaggerating)
> 
> I realize parts (or maybe all) of this were a bit of a mess, but thank you for making it through anyway!
> 
> Thank you so much to those of you who left kudos and comments as I worked! I love you all!
> 
> Find me at [LondonFoginaCup](londonfoginacup.tumblr.com) on tumblr!
> 
> Also, feel free to reblog [the fic post](http://londonfoginacup.tumblr.com/post/158679216009/lululawrence-what-to-do-with-magic-beans-22581) made by the lovely [Lululawrence](lululawrence.tumblr.com)!

**Author's Note:**

> Londonfoginacup on tumblr


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